By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call.
Even as the Twitter commentariat continues to litigate whether Rep. Ilhan Omar’s latest comments about Israel were merely poorly phrased or fully anti-Semitic, the freshman congresswoman ignited another controversy Friday when Politico published part of an interview in which Omar appeared to bash Barack Obama, the patron saint of the Democratic Party, as some sort of war-mongering, neoliberal shill:
Omar says the “hope and change” offered by Barack Obama was a mirage. Recalling the “caging of kids” at the U.S.-Mexico border and the “droning of countries around the world” on Obama’s watch, she argues that the Democratic president operated within the same fundamentally broken framework as his Republican successor.
“We can’t be only upset with Trump . . . His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,” Omar says. “And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”
For some, those comments may prove to be more incendiary than Omar’s criticisms of Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in Washington, which left Republicans and more than a few Democrats fuming. Obama, after all, remains astoundingly popular within his party. In a recent Harvard-Harris Poll survey, a plurality of Democrats said they would label themselves an “Obama Democrat”; fewer identified themselves as “progressive,” and even fewer as “democratic socialist.” If the AIPAC flap was successful in turning off the more hawkish members of the Democratic Party, going after one of its most popular members as a “pretty face”—or, at the very least, giving conservatives enough ammo to build that message—could end up being just as damaging for Omar, whose district voted for Obama by about 50 percent both in 2008 and 2012.
Later Friday, Omar backtracked: “Exhibit A of how reporters distort words,” she wrote on Twitter. “I’m an Obama fan! I was saying how Trump is different from Obama, and why we should focus on policy not politics.” She also provided a link to an audio recording of that section of the interview, in which she describes Trump’s most heinous policies as a continuation of Obama’s:
When we talk about waking people up from complicity, is to say that we can’t be only upset with Trump because he’s not a politician who sells us his policies in the most perfect way. His policies are bad. But many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was. And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.
Whether or not that takes the edge off her stinging criticism of the former president, Omar’s attack on a cherished Democratic president reflects a vocal contingent on the left that has grown increasingly comfortable savaging Obama’s record on immigration, deportation, drone strikes, and “corporatist wars overseas.” Then there is his handling of the 2008 financial crisis, and the fact that no prominent banking executives involved ever went to jail—a sticking point for left-wing activists. As my colleague T.A. Frank wrote more recently, “Obama was a visionary who gave us the Affordable Care Act, DACA, and the Paris deal, but many of the country’s most ominous trends also proceeded apace under his watch. Now, in advance of 2020, a new generation of Democratic candidates is reconsidering his history—perhaps in regard to how it aids their prospects.” Omar, a member of the all-female progressive “Squad” of freshmen making waves in Congress, is simply giving voice to a rising frustration among an ascendent far left that is grappling with Obama’s legacy. That may have made her a hero of the red rose brigade on Twitter, but it’s apparently not a position she’s comfortable holding fast to herself.