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It was necessary to elect Donald Trump because of the crimes of Barack Obama. I probably won’t remember them all any more than I can remember a day’s worth of President Trump’s crimes.

I’ll start with the first which is clear to me because I thought about it a great deal as an elementary school kid. That was in the Sixties during the centennial of the Civil War. My Topeka, Kansas, elementary school had just been integrated, making me one of the few white kids in America who ever actually sat side-by-side with more than one or two black kids in class.

Wondering when a “Negro” might actually have chance to get elected President I did a little mental math. At the time there were still about 10 states that made it impossible for blacks to vote. They also had laws against letting black and white people marry. It had taken a hundred years to integrate schools so I figured it would take another hundred for there to be a black President.

I was off by 50 years. Instead of 2060 Barack Obama got elected in 2012.

That was Obama’s first crime. It was only possible because the hapless Bush Administration resumed a war with Iraq, sat on its thumb while New Orleans was laid waste followed by the Republican’s deregulated home mortgage rules causing the loss of millions of homes and bringing the world to a hair’s breadth from a second Depression.

Ironically, Obama’s election was abetted by “conservative” screamers like Rush Limbaugh who thought the real menace was a woman, Hillary Clinton. Rush and his mini-me’s told their listeners that Obama was a much more gifted candidate than the former first lady. (Shades of their praise for Bernie Sanders?)

But what they were counting on was another Thomas Bradley to guarantee a Republican victory. When black Los Angeles Mayor Bradley ran to be governor of California the polls all said he was a shoe in - except that the voters lied to the pollsters. Afraid that they might be thought racist they couldn’t tell the pollsters the truth.

So, Limbaugh and his minions heaped praise on Obama, who was sure to lose.

I had more faith in American voters. I thought Americans were tired of living in a racist America.

Sure enough, Rush Limbaugh’s calculations blew up in his face. That was Barack Obama’s first crime. Getting elected 50 years too soon.

Black kids learn early from their parents to be squeaky clean and Obama was no exception. He led the least corrupt Administration in U.S. history.

But Limbaughers weren’t all wrong about white concerns. They argued that civil rights were no longer needed. Then they sniffed that Obama was arrogant for saying that “elections have consequences…”

And then Obama committed Crime number two. He had the gall to enact what he had campaigned for. Obama wanted to expand America’s stingy medical coverage to people who depended on emergency rooms. GOP Senator Mitch McConnell, intent on keeping America the stingiest nation in the Free World told the press that his priority was ensuring that Obama became a one-term president.

Health care would require every Democratic Senator to support Obama’s plan even if they represented “red” states. Obama passed the Affordable Care Act without a single Republican vote.

The President’s third crime was telling a lie to pass the Affordable Care Act. The new law did not guarantee Americans the right to use the doctors of their choice. Sensing that fudging this was the only way to cover tens of millions of uninsured Americans, Obama made the guarantee.

It’s one lie vs. 12,000 for Obama’s successor but it cost the Democratic Senators who voted to insure America.

After he won control of the Senate Mitch McConnell would get six years to show the consequence of winning elections.

Obama’s fourth crime would be repeated every time a cop killed an unarmed black citizen. The President sympathized with the victims. The first offense didn’t involve a killing. It was a simple arrest of a black professor for walking into his own house in Boston. Henry Louis Gates, who you may recognize from the PBS show on genealogy, was reported to police by a neighbor who thought it was suspicious that a black man would walk into a house in her neighborhood.

After Professor Gate’s arrest Obama said something unpardonable. He said it was obvious that the cop had acted in haste. How dare he?

Limbaugh had assured white people that civil rights was over now and here was a black president sticking up for black people. When President Obama tried to soothe White America’s hurt feelings by inviting the cop and the professor to a “beer summit” in the Rose Garden the Fox News Crowd sneered.

Every time a black kid was shot and the President cried foul Republicans were outraged. When school children of any race were shot en masse their voter’s first concern was that Obama was going to take guns away. After his reelection fearful gun worshipers stormed gun stores to stock up on guns the way coronavirus worriers had fist fights over toilet paper.

Assaulting the Second Amendment was Obama’s fifth crime.

Finally, when a blowhard TV billionaire jetted around the country claiming that Barack Obama was a Kenyan only to have the State of Hawaii provide the President’s birth certificate Obama was provoked into committing his sixth crime. He roasted Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Imagine that! A president treating real news as fake!

Only a fake president would do that.

Harry Welty takes more potshots at Trump at lincolndemocrat.com