Obama's Exit Interview: I could've Won Again

In a recent interview, President Barack Obama asserted that he could have succeeded in this year’s election if he was eligible to run. The response followed his argument that Americans still subscribe to his vision of progressive change.

Obama told his former senior adviser David Axelrod in an interview for the “The Axe Files” podcast, produced by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN “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.” Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the popular vote by almost 2.9 million ballots, though Trump won more electoral votes and thus the presidency.

However, neither Trump nor Clinton won a majority of the vote in the 2016 contest. On Monday afternoon Trump responded to the President’s assertion that he could have won a third term.

Although the President-elect framed Obama’s comments as describing a head-to-head matchup between the pair, which Obama did not say (in his interview with Axelrod), Trump tweeted “President Obama said that he thinks he would have won against me. He should say that but I say NO WAY! – jobs leaving, ISIS, OCare, etc.”

Since the election, Trump and Obama have largely steered clear of direct criticism of each other.

The podcast interview was Obama’s latest post-election analysis, which seemed to focus on the Democrats’ failure to win non-urban voters and a media preoccupied with negative stories about Clinton.

Obama said this year the democratic party hadn’t made an emotional connection to voters in hard-hit communities, relying instead on policy points he said didn’t make enough of an impact. President Obama also said part of his post-presidential strategy would be developing young Democratic leaders — including organizers, journalists and politicians — who could galvanize voters behind a progressive agenda.

Obama also made it clear that he won’t hesitate to weigh in on important political debates after he leaves office.

Following a period of introspection after he departs the White House, Obama said he would feel a responsibility as a citizen to voice his opinions on major issues gripping the country during Trump’s administration though he would not necessarily weigh in on day-to-day activities.

Obama’s first acts out of office, however, will be on a lower-profile as he’ll focus on writing a book and self-analyzing his time in office. Obama and his family plan to live in Washington while his younger daughter finishes high school.

“I have to be quiet for a while. And I don’t mean politically, I mean internally. I have to still myself,” he said. “You have to get back in tune with your center and process what’s happened before you make a bunch of good decisions.”

As he concludes his term, Obama is growing sentimental about his time at the White House. He said he grew misty eyed in a meeting of senior aides recently thinking about the end of the Obama era.

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