Barack Obama’s exit interview with David Axelrod, his former senior adviser and current Democratic shill for CNN, is turning out to be the gift that keeps giving. Among the delusional claims he made during the sitdown on Monday was his assertion that if he had been able to run again, he’d have won a third term.
Obama also shared his belief that the media were to blame, at least in part, for rural Americans not voting Democratic this election despite his administration’s having pumped billions of dollars into rural economies.
“Tom — Tom Vilsack, my agriculture secretary from Iowa. We — we devoted more attention, more focus, put more resources into rural America than has — has been the case probably for the last two, three decades,” the outgoing president told his host, adding:
And — and it paid great dividends, but you just wouldn’t know that, that’s not something that you would see on the nightly news.
And so we’ve got to figure out how do we show people and communicate in a way that is visceral and — and makes an emotional connection as opposed to just the facts, because the facts are all in dispute these days.
The “facts in dispute” is a reference to the sudden preponderance so-called “fake news,” which is another excuse he and the Left are citing for why Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump.
As for his claims about the USDA, the department did in fact pump out $6.5 billion in 2016 to fund rural electrical utilities, housing, and community development. But despite all that, rural Americans overwhelmingly voted for the Republican candidate, eschewing Clinton who was largely seen as a “third term” for Obama.
Obama won 45% of the rural vote in 2008, but Clinton only won 34% of that demographic in the last election, while Trump came away with 62%. Those numbers have Democrats stumped.
“Hillary lost rural America 3 to 1,” an unnamed Democratic insider told Politico. “If she had lost rural America 2 to 1, it would have broken differently.”
About 20% of Americans live in rural communities, but they made up 17% of the electorate last election cycle.
“Look, the Affordable Care Act benefits a huge number of Trump voters,” Obama said, referencing a recent Vox article about Kentuckians using Obamacare who voted for Trump. He added:
There are a lot of folks in places like West Virginia or Kentucky who didn’t vote for Hillary, didn’t vote for me, but are being helped by this.
The — the problem is, is that we’re not there on the ground communicating not only the dry policy aspects of this, but that we care about these communities, that we’re bleeding for these communities.
And there’s an emotional connection, and part of what we have to do to rebuild is to be there and — and that means organizing, that means caring about state parties, it means caring about local races, state boards or school boards and city councils and state legislative races and 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.
This report, by Michael Bastasch, was cross-posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
