r/neoliberal • u/Sine_Fine_Belli NATO • 1d ago
News (US) Obama and Harris publicly rebuke Trump’s second-term actions
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/04/politics/obama-harris-rebuke-trump/index.html450
u/Icy-Magician-8085 Mario Draghi 1d ago
Completely unrelated, but seeing Obama greyed out makes me feel old and I’m in my 20’s 😭
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u/SpiffShientz Court Jester Steve 1d ago
He's been grayed out since his second term
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u/Icy-Magician-8085 Mario Draghi 1d ago
I know it’s been happening but it’s a complete light grey now. The once or twice a year I see a picture of him in the news he just looks significantly older than my childhood and it hits me.
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u/anothercocycle 1d ago
Yeah, I think it's especially bad because youth was such a key part of his image. Even now when I think about Obama I can't help but think of him as a young politician for an instant before my brain kicks in.
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u/ProudScroll NATO 1d ago
The fact that he is significantly younger than either of successors probably plays a big role in this.
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u/surgingchaos Friedrich Hayek 1d ago
It doesn't help that we have had zero Gen X presidents, and Obama is the only person from Generation Jones. Gen X has a ton of shit politically about them that sucks, but I think a big untold problem with the presidency being seen as a gerontocracy is in large part to do with the fact that two full generations have been locked out of the White House despite being in the primes of their careers.
The fact that JD Vance is the very first millennial just to be on a presidential ticket shows just how much the American political system is heavily biased towards older generations.
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u/MayorofTromaville YIMBY 1d ago
I mean, the Silent Generation just barely managed to get their first president with Biden.
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u/Harudera 1d ago
Yeah and they're the parents of Gen X, and both generations are eclipsed by size of the ones right after them, the Boomer and Millennials.
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u/DiogenesLaertys 1d ago
He was cherry picked by Generation X though. Thiel had a big hand in helping him up.
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u/NeueBruecke_Detektiv 1d ago
Lies, he ain't grey while playing CoD with biden in the pandemic
You can't fool me
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u/Louis_de_Gaspesie 1d ago
He looks pretty damn good for 63 tho. Like yea his hair is gray but overall he's aged pretty well
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u/Okbuddyliberals Miss Me Yet? 1d ago
Obama is 63 years old
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u/wallander1983 Resistance Lib 1d ago
Oh dear god.
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u/Okbuddyliberals Miss Me Yet? 1d ago
Obama's birth was closer to the assassination of William McKinley than to today
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u/wallander1983 Resistance Lib 1d ago
Stop it.:(
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u/One_Bison_5139 1d ago
Cleopatra was born closer to the first moon landing than the construction of the pyramids
... wait
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u/Mickenfox European Union 23h ago
By American standards he still has two political careers ahead of him.
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u/DraconianWolf George Soros 1d ago
Hope he starts "trolling" the media with talks of a third term so we can all claim Republicans are overreacting to an obvious joke
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u/FartBarf6969 Niels Bohr 1d ago
Nah, lets not normalize the rhetoric. It would be funny for us but its also all Fox News need to do the "see? Both sides do it, what he is saying is normal" schtick.
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u/miss_shivers 1d ago
The right way to do it is for Obama to make it an obvious joke.
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u/k5berry 18h ago
Once it leaves Trump’s mouth, it is normalized. They don’t need a both sides to point to, the gravitational pull of Teflon Don is strong enough. So I think something low stakes like this is an example of where we can’t be obsessed with coloring within the lines out of fear we’ll ruin the image, because our playmate just took a shit on the paper.
And for a HOT take: if the judiciary bends the knee and finds Trump eligible for a third term… why not run Obama again if he is our best shot? Not that I want that, I actively beg it does not come to that. But if it came to that point and if it were our best shot, it wouldn’t just be OK to do it IMO, we’d have an imperative to do it. In a civic fantasy world, he could even run, win, make whatever changes are needed to ensure our democratic institutions are stronger, and then resign.
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u/miss_shivers 1d ago
About time. These two need to be a lot more vocal.
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u/iusedtobekewl Jerome Powell 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean yes but also they put this shit on blast before the election and nobody listened to them. Pile on all the people blaming them for losing the election to this moron, and I don’t blame them for being silent until now.
They warned us all, and Kamala Harris even torched Trump about in their debate, and 77,284,118 people still didn’t listen.
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u/homerpezdispenser Janet Yellen 1d ago edited 1d ago
From a messaging and media relations perspective, a few chill "I warned ya" moments might be best. It's not as if Obama and Harris taking it up to 11 again "THE NATION IS FALLING APART" would reach people vs diminishing returns or just backfiring somehow. This kind of tone might reach and persuade the largest amount of people possible right now, in a way that's most meaningful and effective for now. Or maybe it should be something else, IDK - the point is whatever gets Medians lapping it up and talking.
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u/betafish2345 1d ago
“Medians” lol. That needs to be a slur.
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u/Foucault_Please_No Emma Lazarus 1d ago
I'm down but u/p00bix would ruin our fun as soon as he caught wind.
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u/Beer-survivalist Karl Popper 1d ago
I can't even say regarded with the fash mod thought police showing up.
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u/homerpezdispenser Janet Yellen 1d ago
Love em on roads, love em in data analysis, ... In my electorate though ...
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u/Healingjoe It's Klobberin' Time 1d ago
Correct. Oftentimes, less is more.
Obama waiting until now before rebuking Trump was an astute move.
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u/BozoFromZozo 1d ago
I think both are aware of the risk of speaking out, not only for themselves or their family, but also being a convenient foil for Trump to rage against and end up muddying the waters.
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u/byproxxy George Soros 1d ago
I’d like to live in the universe where them being more vocal would make things better. I really would.
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u/JapanesePeso Deregulate stuff idc what 1d ago
Them being more vocal does not change the calculus even a tiny bit.
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u/miss_shivers 1d ago
Whatever that means.
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u/PleaseGreaseTheL World Bank 1d ago
It means this is meaningless, Obama and Harris don't fucking matter in 2025, this is just a dose of copium for us.
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u/Cultural_Ebb4794 Bill Gates 1d ago
What does matter then? Everyone's butthurt about the dems "doing nothing," but when you have two of the most influential dems in the country speak out it's meaningless and doesn't matter?
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u/PleaseGreaseTheL World Bank 1d ago
I guess I want people actually
- in office, or
- running for office,
to actually do stuff that might have an impact on how shit is run. For instance, Schmuck Schumer could have done literally anything to try and obstruct this admin, and instead enabled it. That mattered.
These two speaking out literally doesn't sway anyone. Zero MAGA people respect either of them, they fucking despise both of them - they're both minorities, they're both democrats, they're both seen as leftist socialist demons who want to destroy America. Many median voters don't like them either (Harris literally just lost the election to the guy she's speaking out against - and lots of people still hate her and blame the modern Democratic party, under her and Biden, for enabling Gaza, whether or not that makes sense or is true/fair.)
This is. Pure. Cope. This is an attempt to substitute people who actually are in power and could do at least some obstruction and truly notable shit, like Cory Booker, for two former candidate who nobody in power fucking cares about and the electorate either hates or who has moved on from.
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u/Dependent-Picture507 1d ago edited 1d ago
Chuck Schumer had no leverage and shutting down the government at that point would not have accomplished anything since the Republicans would just say no to anything the Dems proposed, since the Dems have no leverage. Trump and Elon would love the government to close so Trump can spend more time golfing and Elon could pillage with even less oversight. It was a lose-lose situation.
Fact is, Democrats have no power and all they can do is work on messaging and filling the voids that the Republicans are creating like town halls and such. Call them out on their bullshit. Track every action of the admin and file lawsuit after lawsuit. Hold out until we get an opportunity to exercise some kind of power.
This tariff fiasco may push enough people over the edge where Democrats will have an opportunity to begin seriously damaging the Trump admin's hold on power. Trump has overreached and if the Democrats play it right and focus the messaging on what has been unleashed on us, I think we can damage the Trump brand to the point where people will turn on him in enough numbers to empower the Republicans in office to turn on him. We don't need them all, we just need enough to push through some votes. As much as I don't like him, people like Rand Paul will vote with the Democrats on this.
Many people don't give a fuck about some random people they don't know getting deported without due process. It's easy to ignore that if you are a selfish person. But if your 401k just lost a quarter of its value, you're not gonna just brush it off. I am hopeful that this is the turning point. The damage that these tariffs have done to the global order and global economy is staggering. Undoing this damage will take time. But this is the best opportunity to come at Trump hard, open the tent, and try to get enough of the people in the middle to acknowledge the fact that Trump is just a moron and doesn't have some masterplan beyond power and money for himself and only himself.
This is not a time for Dems to be conducting purity tests, and I'm glad to see them move away from that toxic behavior. At the end of the day, this is a fight between those of us that like this whole western liberal order thing and want us to maintain our influence vs those that want to tear it down for one reason or another. Luckily, there are more of us and we just need to focus on aligning everyone on the same side. There are plenty of Republicans that want to dump Trump, they just need to be given the exit ramp.
If you haven't watched the Newsom podcast with the mooch, I highly recommend it. I didn't realize how much of a 180 the mooch has done. He is speaking honestly and open about the situation like almost nobody I've seen.
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u/Moth-of-Asphodel 13h ago
I'm so done with this guy.
Bring out Bill and Joe and you have my attention.
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u/HowardtheFalse Kofi Annan 1d ago
Ok but what if Trump actually did say something funny? He's awful in more ways than can be expressed but I don't think anybody here hasn't laughed at something he said at some point, like asking "At that age it's marginal, right?" to the kid who still believed in Christmas.
Obama is also really funny, just look at his Rahm Emanuel joke, so this pic doesn't really surprise me at all. I get people who are really focused on optics may be but they were at a funeral and seated by each other.
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1d ago
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u/HowardtheFalse Kofi Annan 1d ago
You don't get as far along in politics as to be seated at the Presidents' section of Jimmy Carter's state funeral if you're the kind of person who can't be in a room with unsavory people.
If Donald Trump offends you now, imagine how much more he would offend you if he claimed you were a false American, born in Kenya? And the Americans still elected him? If I were Obama I'd be like fuck this country too, but instead he still campaigned in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024 and none of that service is undone or discredited by one pic of laughing at a joke.
Blow a rape whistle and the right would call you hysterical and uptight while the left would say you made Carter's send-off all about yourself and took away attention from the most decent man to serve as US president in a century.
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u/arist0geiton Montesquieu 1d ago
I would have blown my rape whistle instead,
At jimmy Carter's funeral? Do you often make scenes at solemn events?
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u/HowardtheFalse Kofi Annan 1d ago edited 1d ago
If they blew a rape whistle at merely sitting by Trump during Jimmy "Notorious Do-gooder" Carter's funeral, I kind of wonder how they'd tackle the 2017 inauguration.
Which to prioritize? My "not being in the same room as a rapist" virtue or the tradition of peacefully transfer of power? It's silly to act like this one funeral pic summarizes the Obama-Trump relationship.
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u/DeparturePlenty4446 1d ago
Thanks, Obamna