Out-Foxed and Out-Flanked: The Incredible Shrinking Obama Presidency
With each passing day, President Barack Obama’s once bright and shining star grows dimmer and dimmer as winter — and unemployment — casts its long shadow of discontent across America. The recent loss of 63 Democratic seats in the House of Representatives last month, shrinking the Democrats’ hold on Washington and flipping the House to new Republican leadership in January and the stunning Wikileaks debacle, landed more body blows to the White House, which seems to be reeling from their political misfortunes.
Elected under the rubric of “change” and a new politics in 2008 that reflected the “no drama Obama” rationality and insistence upon respectful political discourse (it takes two to have a conversation,) Obama soon found out just how disinterested the Grand Old Party was about respecting his mandate. They didn’t care that he was victorious by winning with 53 percent of the popular vote and by garnering a whopping 365 electoral college votes.
Nor did they respect him, as they promptly set out with vengeance to show him just how little regard they had for the first black president of the United States.
There was no honeymoon for Obama, just as there was none for Bill Clinton, the last Democrat to be president.
From the beginning of Obama’s presidency, the Republicans and their allies have worked assiduously to undermine his credibility and have achieved significant success in casting doubt among the American public about whether he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii (even former Republican Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle verified Obama was born in Honolulu’s Kapiolani Women and Children’s hospital,) and have convinced a substantial number of Americans, nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, said they wrongly think Obama is Muslim, up from the 11 percent reported in March 2009, according to a recent Pew poll  taken last summer.  The White House was so concerned about the polling results that it was forced to issue a statement reasserting that the president is a self-professed Christian.
A political maxim taught from time immemorial, that every blow landed by one’s opponent should be immediately returned, was haughtily dismissed as “old politics” (i.e. Clintonian like, thus the “old politics”) by the Obama White House, to their great detriment. Â The relentless media-pounding applied by Republican surrogates went un-returned by Obama’s “new politics,” driving down his polling numbers. Â Coupled with a protracted legislative health care reform fight that went curiously undefended by the White House during the summer of 2009, Obama miraculously pulled victory from the jaws of defeat when he signed the health care reform bill into law, only to maddeningly run away from this incredible achievement during the recent elections.
Since Bill Clinton’s election to the presidency in 1992 the Republicans have been on a hell-bent destructive path of no holds barred and scorched earth approach to governance as participants in our two-party system via their tactics of obstruction, denigration, defamation, blocking, filibustering and lying repeatedly about the aims and intentions of Democrats elected to the White House and on the Hill. Â The cumulative effect of these strategies has resulted in fewer Americans trusting government, and now in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, more and more feel that America’s best days are behind us.
In this environment with Democratic blood on the water, the president looks more naive and politically incompetent with each passing day. Â As Howard Fineman reported yesterday at the Huffington Post, he does not seem to enjoy the rough and tumble of legislative battle and continues to underestimate the Republican appetite to drive his White House into further retreat.
His lack of experience as a legislator was betrayed this week when Obama announced the White House had had a good meeting with the GOP leadership about issues they could “work together on.” Obama’s understanding was put into stark relief in less than 24 hours as the Republicans reflected their “good will” by informing Senator Harry Reid they would filibuster all issues, including unemployment compensation, before the Senate in the remaining days of the lame duck session, until the Bush tax cuts are extended to all Americans, regardless of income.
Official unemployment figures hover at nearly 10 percent across America and that does not include thousands of unemployed who have not worked in over two years. Â Many parts of the country have slid into depression-like circumstances: Â food pantry demands continue to rise; homeless families numbers are up; food stamp demands continue to rise and the underemployed have lost their health insurance and other benefits as demands for public assistance fall to local and state governments, who are also cash strapped as revenues have dried up. Â Many educated workers in their 50s and 60s have lost their homes, wiped out their IRAs and 401ks just to survive, believing they will never return full-time to the work force with previous levels of income and compensation.
This is the situation that faces President Obama and the Democratic Party. Â If this president is unable to persuasively address the basic needs of a battered middle class and convince them that he will lead us out of this terrible morass, he will be a one-term president and deservedly so.
In the aftermath of the midterm elections, Obama has not demonstrated he is up to the task.  He needs to roll up his sleeves and get engaged in this political fight for the country and his presidency. We are waiting, but time is running out on Barack Obama and his once believed great promise.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
