Thread by @mehdirhasan

"It was as if my very presence in the White House had triggered a deep-seated panic, a sense that the natural order had been disrupted...For millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House, [DJT] promised an elixir for their racial anxiety"
cnn.com/2020/11/12/pol…

"Through Palin, it seemed as if the dark spirits that had long been lurking on the edges of the [GOP] - xenophobia, anti intellectualism, paranoid conspiracy theories, an antipathy toward Black and brown folks - were finding their way to center stage."
cnn.com/2020/11/12/pol…

Obama is right to highlight #racialresentment over #economicanxiety when it comes to the GOP's messaging. He's also right to highlight the role of Palin, and of course by extension the hallowed John McCain!, in the run-up to Trump, as I have argued here:
theintercept.com/2018/08/27/hol…

Meanwhile an important message from Obama to Biden from his memoir, via @CNN: "The [2010] election didn't prove our agenda had been wrong. It just proved that... I'd failed to rally the nation, as FDR had once done, behind what I knew to be right. Which to me was just as damning"

Obama tries to defend McCain over Palin: "I'd like to think that given the chance to do it over again, he might have chosen differently. I believe he really did put his country first."

Erm, in May 2018, NYT reported that McCain "continues to defend Ms. Palin’s performance.” !!!

"One of the reasons I'd chosen Joe to act as an intermediary...was my awareness that in McConnell's mind, negotiations with the [VP] didn't inflame the Republican base in quite the same way that any appearance of cooperation with (Black, Muslim socialist) Obama was bound to do"!!

A reminder from Obama himself, to all the 'what about Obama-Trump voters? How can *they* be racist?' folks, that white people who vote for a black man can still have racist attitudes (or be, per the political scientists, "racially resentful"). From CNN:
cnn.com/2020/11/12/pol…