Barack obama

Dear Democrat voters, You are probably the most influential and powerful segment of the human race today. In terms of cultural reach, you are supreme; politically you are masters of the universe; you have the ability to shape our world for good or evil, and for most of the past century you and your forebears have done a pretty good job of it. I’m addressing this to Democrats in particular because in the US, as in Britain, liberalism is the prestige faith; the ratio of Democrats to Republicans in American academia is now five to one, and up to forty to one in some social sciences. Eight of the ten richest

If, on the night of Monday September 26, a US presidential election had been held instead of a televised debate, Donald Trump would likely now be America’s president-elect. That morning the reliable on-line poll analyst Nate Silver, sympathetic to Clinton, had tweeted, ‘It’s a dead heat,’ and then, a few minutes later, ‘State firewall breaking up. Trend lines awful.’ In retrospect, one simple task stood between Trump and the presidency: he had to look like some version of a rational human being. He failed. As Conrad Black has put it, the office of the presidency has been seeking Donald Trump. That night, Trump essentially picked up the phone and told

World leaders are preoccupied nowadays with what is known as their ‘legacy’. In practice, this means being linked with moral-sounding projects, rather than embedding clear achievements. Barack Obama is even more obsessed with legacy than his predecessors. What might be his final way of showing this? Some suggest he will order the United States to abstain if France brings forward its planned UN Security Council resolution calling for a Palestinian state, thus permitting the resolution to pass. If so, he will bring no peace, but who cares? He will have signalled his virtue. My invitation to the Pink News dinner (where David Cameron won an award) on Wednesday night promised ‘an

The more you study history, the more you realise how hopeless it is to try predicting the future. Even sophisticated polling can’t prevent surprises like the two recent whoppers in the UK: the wrong prediction of a razor-thin margin for David Cameron in 2015, followed by the wrong prediction of a Brexit defeat in this summer’s referendum. I’m a history professor. If anyone knows better than to make predictions, it’s me. Nevertheless, I predict that the Democratic Party will win the presidency and the Senate in November, but will continue as minority party in the House of Representatives. Let me explain why. Every fourth year, presidential elections bring out plenty

Wasn’t it one of the ‘Remain’ campaign’s big arguments that leaving the EU would deprive us of the ‘clout’ we enjoy in negotiating foreign trade agreements? I seem to remember someone even warning us that in the event of Brexit we would go ‘to the back of the queue’ for a trade agreement with the US. So much for being at the front of the queue. Today, the French minister for foreign trade, Matthias Fekl, demanded an end to talks with the US over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). It comes hot on the heels of claim yesterday by German deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel that TTIP has failed.

Donald Trump doesn’t seem the forgiving type, so it’s no surprise he hasn’t let Barack Obama’s comments yesterday stand. Obama said Trump was ‘unfit’ to be President – so what did the Republican candidate have to say in response? He answered in the only way he knows how, by flinging mud back at the person who called him out. Here’s what he said: ‘Well he’s a terrible President, he’ll probably go down as the worst President in the history of our country. He’s been a total disaster, you look at what’s happened to the Middle East, what’s happened to Syria and his ‘line in the sand’.’ It’s unlikely Obama will

Hillary Clinton can count herself lucky to have Barack Obama cheerleading her bid for the presidency. The outgoing President is ending his time in power with high approval ratings. People still approve of him after all these years; like Hillary’s husband Bill, Barack’s presidency is ending on a high. And last night, at the Democratic Convention in Phili, he gave an absolute belter of speech supporting her claim to the White House. It was the speech progressives have been aching to hear. Mr Obama addressed the American people directly, when he said: ‘Time and again, you’ve picked me up. I hope, sometimes, I picked you up, too. Tonight, I ask you

So after the glorious disunity of the Republican convention, now is the chance for the Democrats to pull together and show their rivals what unity is all about. If only. As with so much of politics at the moment, the script is there to be broken and that much was clear when Bernie Sanders was booed as he endorsed his one-time rival Hillary Clinton. To be fair to Sanders, he did try his best to throw his weight behind Hillary. ‘Hillary, Hillary, Hillary,’ was the chorus of his speech which was intended to draw a line under a fractious primary campaign – and unlike Ted Cruz he could at least