‘If I Had Run Again’ Coach Obama says his team’s big loss wasn’t his fault.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/if-i-had-run-again-1482882726
In the post-election annals of “woulda, coulda, shoulda,” it will be hard to top departing President Barack Obama’s boast that he would have defeated Donald Trump “if I had run again.”
This, it goes without saying, triggered a tweet from Mr. Trump: “He should say that but I say NO WAY!”
How edifying to witness an American President and President-elect exchanging taunts like two eighth-graders in the schoolyard.
Mr. Obama unburdened himself of this analysis in a podcast with his former White House adviser David Axelrod. Though Mr. Obama is fond of sports analogies, one he seems not to have noticed is that most coaches after a Super Bowl loss don’t blame it on their own quarterback, the diabolical opposition or the media.
Mr. Obama said that Hillary Clinton, who ran as a third Obama term, “played it safe.” People felt the country was on the wrong track because Mitch McConnell threw “sand in the gears” of Washington. His advice to Democrats now is “not thinking that somehow just a great set of progressive policies that we present to the New York Times editorial board will win the day.”
The serious thought inside Mr. Obama’s late hit is whether progressive ideas need revision, or merely need to be recycled with a different messenger, like him. We doubt all Democrats will be as enthusiastic about running again on the economic and foreign-policy record of 2009-2016.
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