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Obama warns Trump is a threat to democracy in searing DNC speech (full text and full VIDEO)

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In what some analysts have called the best speech he has ever given (see above video for full speech), former President Barack Obama blasted Donald Trump as unfit for the Presidency and an existential threat to American democracy. The “No Drama Obama” was not there but a grim Obama who in a searing speech delivered a historically stunning rebuke of his predecessor.

Politico:

But despite the optimistic strands, Obama did not minimize the threat he believes the country faces under President Donald Trump. “It is not a normal time,” he said at the top. “So tonight I want to talk as plainly as I can about the stakes in this election. Because what we do these next 76 days will echo through generations to come.”

…Obama accused Trump of failing to “discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.” He essentially accused him of corruption and abuse of power, saying Trump had “no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends.” And he accused his successor of a dangerous form of narcissism when he said that Trump had “no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.”

…Obama then detoured to a positive case for Biden. But after some personal reflections on his capacity for empathy and how Biden made him a better president, Obama’s case for Biden (and Kamala Harris) became a case against Trump. Biden and Harris “actually care about every American” and they “care deeply about this democracy,” and that “the right to vote is sacred,” and “that no one including the president is above the law and that no public official, including the president, should use their office to enrich themselves or their supporters.”

There was more. Biden would never “use the men and women of our military who are willing to risk everything to protect our nation as political props to deploy against peaceful protesters on our own soil.” He and Harris believe “political opponents aren’t un-American just because they disagree with you” and that “a free press isn’t the enemy.” They wouldn’t attack the pandemic by “just making stuff up.”

But, again, the main point — the reason that a former president who wanted to enjoy a cushier post-presidency of intellectual pursuits (starting with his memoir), international do-goodism, and hobnobbing on yachts with the likes of David Geffen broke the tradition of not pillorying his successor — is the certainty that Trump is doing nothing less than undermining the American system. “That’s what‘s at stake right now,” he said. “Our democracy.” If the point wasn’t clear, Obama gave his speech in Philadelphia before a blown-up picture of the Constitution.

“None of this should be controversial,” Obama said, with the characteristic exasperation he exhibits when he can’t believe that others don’t see something that is so blindingly obvious to him. “These shouldn’t be Republican principles or Democratic principles. They are American principles. But at this moment, this president and those who enable him have shown they don’t believe in these things.”

CNN:

From the Philadelphia ground where the American experiment was born, one former president — in a stunning prime-time address to the nation he once led — warned that his successor was on the cusp of destroying democracy itself.

The latest installment of the long duel between Barack Obama and Donald Trump perfectly exemplified the jarring contrasts in personal and political temperaments of the two defining White House residents of this age. And it took their rivalry to a level unprecedented in the modern history of the presidency.

Obama — serious and intellectual — delivered a complex constitutional lecture on primetime television during the virtual Democratic National Convention. He summoned historic sweep, encompassing the Founders, the Civil Rights Movement, America’s immigrant heritage and young Americans he called to action today to save their freedoms just as their ancestors had done every time the country’s promise was imperiled.

…In 2004, Obama made his name with the youthful, exuberant — and perhaps naive — hope of his address to the DNC. Sixteen years on, a grizzled Obama the elder warned America that it should expect a “president to be the custodian of this democracy.”

And:

“We should expect that regardless of ego, ambition, or political beliefs, the president will preserve, protect, and defend the freedoms and ideals that so many Americans marched for and went to jail for; fought for and died for,” he said.

Obama, now a private citizen, has no formal power and no mandate to speak to the American people the way he did Wednesday night, at a virtual convention that in its crowd-free isolation served to underscore the grave nature of his message.

But he carries the authority of his historic status, the moral weight of two White House terms and enduring popularity in the half of the country revolted by Trump’s abuses of power, divisive racial politics and constant cultivation of his own ego.

And Obama’s breach of etiquette for retired presidents was preceded by years of Trump attacking him in ways never previously seen by an American presidential successor, with Trump routinely, baselessly accusing Obama of treason.

The former President presented himself as a guardian of democracy, of 243 years of Constitutional norms and authority borrowed from the masses not imposed from a strongman leader from above.

“Do not let them take away your power. Don’t let them take away your democracy,” Obama said in a plea that was far deeper than a political leader’s repudiation of the legacy destroying policies of his predecessor.

“Make a plan right now for how you’re going to get involved and vote. Do it as early as you can and tell your family and friends how they can vote too,” Obama said, accusing the Trump administration of suppressing the vote and counting on the cynicism of the people to guarantee four more years.

“What we do echoes through the generations,” Obama said, in what amounted to probably the most watched lecture on America’s constitutional heritage in history.

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait wrote that it was the first time he has ever seen Obama scared:

But what was most striking was that Obama depicted Trump as a threat to American democracy. His famous line about the arc of history bending toward justice was never the entirety of his view. Obama has always told the story of America as a push and pull between progress and reaction, advances followed by retreats. He has always placed his opponents — the Paul Ryans and the Mitt Romneys — in that context.

He put Trump outside that dynamic. The whole future, he warned, rests on ending Trump’s reign: “Any chance of success depends entirely on the outcome of this election. This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that’s what it takes to win.”

He delivered the warning with almost four years of taut, pent-up energy released in one blow: “That’s how a democracy withers, until it’s no democracy at all … Do not let them take away your power. Do not let them take away your democracy.”

Here is an American president warning that American democracy may not survive his immediate successor. Obama has always maintained a preternatural calm. Throughout his eight years in office, he was gently mocked as a Vulcan, chided for his lack of urgency and emotion, always underreacting to the latest developments while everybody else lost their head. This is the first time I have ever seen him express fear.

GO HERE to read the FULL TEXT of Obama’s speech.