Barack Obama is like H&R Block. When he talks, people listen. Particularly those who tend to lean left, as was likely most of the audience who listened to his recent interview with David Axelrod of the podcast, “The Axe Files” on CNN.
In between the usual talking points, Obama had a message for Republican primary candidates, particularly those who could leverage their minority status.
Economic vs. Cultural Republicanism
Obama claims that the Republican Party has embraced a cultural populist agenda along with an old, elitist economic agenda.
“There’s an opening for a smart Republican out there to talk about economic issues and say ‘You know what, I wouldn’t mind the people who are doing really well paying a little bit higher in taxes. I may not want to spend it the same way Democrats do. I may have different theories about what’s going to give working folks more of a chance.’”
He continued to point out that any major revisions to the country’s tax system that he claims, “skew badly towards” the top one to ten percent, is difficult to do because it requires a working majority to “push stuff through and that’s very hard to do.”
Obama is not wrong, but the difficulty in moving the great big barge of policy in this country is not a bug, it’s a feature of our democracy.
New legislation was always supposed to be hard to pass and require a great deal of compromise from both parties.
Current Tax Rates
The tax code for 2023 requires that the top one to ten percent of income earners pay 37 percent of their income to federal taxes. Granted, the “loopholes,” that Democrats are so fond of crying about do exist, but the irony is that they all benefit from them as much as their nearest enemy.
How much more would those in the government like people to pay? Over half of their earned income?
In 2021, the U.S. Census Bureau found that the 2020 median household income was $67, 521. Based on this number, the Pew definition of “middle class” would include households earning between $45,239 and $135,042. Those numbers have likely increased in the past three years or so. Using those ranges, the “middle class” is still paying almost a quarter of its income earned to the federal government.
And while “middle class” is used to describe a majority of American households, this number is diminishing and the amount of income needed to attain this status has skyrocketed. According to a Fortune report, $80,000 to 90,000 for a three-person household is now required to be considered “middle income.”
The Race Factor
Obama then turned to one of the most contentious topics in American culture today: race.
“Race has always been the fault line in American politics, society, and culture. It was the first and the most powerful. The idea that that would no longer be the case when I was president was foolish.”
It is exactly this type of narrative that Republican candidates are striving to dismantle, and none so much as Tim Scott.
Scott has said repeatedly, “The truth of MY life disproves the lies of the radical Left.”
Obama acknowledges that part of the message from Scott, and even other conservatives such as Nikki Haley and Justice Clarence Thomas, are similar to his own from past campaigns.
A message of hope that postulates African American and minority candidates such as themselves would not be standing where they are today if it weren’t for the ideals and principles of the American experiment.
However, that’s where the similarity ends for Obama. He is critical of those with the same color of skin on the other side of the aisle, claiming they fail to reckon with the truth of past wrongdoings.
That affirming message, Obama says, “has to be undergirded with an honest accounting of our past and our present.”
He continued:
“If a Republican who may even be sincere in saying ‘I want us all to live together’ doesn’t have a plan for how do we address crippling generational poverty that is a consequence of hundreds of years of racism in society and we need to do something about that … if that candidate is not willing to acknowledge that again and again we’ve seen discrimination … if they’re not doing that then people are rightly skeptical.”
Obama almost drops the gauntlet for candidates such as Scott and Haley.
“There may come a time where there is somebody in the Republican party that is more serious about actually addressing some of the deep inequality that still exists in our society that tracks race and is a consequence of our racial history.”
“If that happens, I think that would be fantastic. I haven’t yet seen it.”
I don’t think candidates such as Haley and Scott ignore the ugliness of American history and slavery and its consequences; they just see different solutions.
These conservative candidates would like to see a shift to cultural values that center around family, hard work, and an education that teaches skills and first principles rather than race-based ideologies, which enforce a power dynamic of oppression are the solutions. Not a fanning of the flames of racial tension by claiming every injustice, every wrong, and every inequality is racially motivated.
Ironically, in 2008, Obama outlined the fatherlessness crisis in the black community and called for better parenting and personal responsibility, particularly for low-income African American families.
At Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago on Father’s Day, Obama addressed a mostly black audience, telling them not to “just sit in the house watching SportsCenter” and to stop praising themselves for mediocre accomplishments.
“Don’t get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation,” he said. “You’re supposed to graduate from eighth grade.”
“We need families to raise our children,” he said. “We need fathers to realize that responsibility doesn’t just end at conception. Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”
Obama’s message back then doesn’t seem to be too disparate from that of many minority Republicans.
One can hardly believe his core values have changed, but maybe his incentives for promoting such values have changed.
Jennifer Galardi is the politics and culture editor for 19FortyFive.com. She has a Master’s in Public Policy from Pepperdine University and produces and hosts the podcast Connection with conversations that address health, culture, politics and policy. In a previous life, she wrote for publications in the health, fitness, and nutrition space. In addition, her pieces have been published in the Epoch Times and Pepperdine Policy Review.
