By Phillip Stucky
President Barack Obama believes he would win re-election if he were able to run for a third term, according to a CNN interview published Monday.
Obama told CNN he would win because he achieved the “change” he ran on in 2008, asserting he successfully shifted America’s culture.
“In the wake of the election and Trump winning, a lot of people have suggested that somehow, it really was a fantasy,” Obama said of his change slogan in 2008. “What I would argue is, is that the culture actually did shift, that the majority does buy into the notion of a one America that is tolerant and diverse and open and full of energy and dynamism.”
“I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Obama told David Axelrod during the interview.
But, Obama didn’t mention Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton once said she would essentially serve as the third-term president of Obama’s legacy. Both Barack and Michelle Obama even campaigned heavily for the perennial Democrat, but Trump still won the White House.
Obama particularly campaigned hard for black votes after Clinton wasn’t able to get large numbers of minority voters. The president said during a speech in September that he would take it as an “insult” to his legacy if black and Latino voters didn’t come to the polls in November.
Exit polling nationwide revealed that black and Latino voters — as well as white women and men — didn’t come out to vote for Clinton in numbers close to Obama’s support in 2008 or 2012.
Obama still asserts he would win if he ran for re-election, even though President-elect Donald Trump won on several key issues that directly reject Obama’s goal for America.
Trump won on reversing Obama’s stance on immigration, as well as repealing and replacing Obamacare, the outgoing president’s biggest achievement. Voters in Florida, Michigan, and other key states flatly rejected Obama’s legacy in November, with much of America voting against Democrats up and down the ballot.
