Hillary and Barack
Hillary and Barack

Few people from either party expected Donald Trump to be elected, but the presidential transition is already well underway, and Barack Obama seems to have digested the situation and gotten over the shock.

Regardless of any criticism of his performance or the reforms, policies, and doctrine that have characterized his presidency, and regardless of any adjustments that Hillary Clinton might have made, until the outcome was final Obama could have expected that a Clinton presidency would, on the whole, continue along in the same general direction that he has taken the country and world. Until the outcome was final Obama might have even hoped that Clinton would inherit a Democratic majority in the Senate.

Prior to election night, fears of a lame duck Hail Mary directed at Israel may have been somewhat alleviated by statements from the Obama administration, but prior to election night, there was little reason to expect Trump to win.
This might be a good time for a Democrat to panic. For a Democratic president facing the imminent inauguration of a Republican president, and a Republican Congress, and the installation of cabinet secretaries and ambassadors (say to the UN, and to Israel) who will hold radically different views of the world, there is little to do other than sit and prepare to watch everything you have built and everything you believe in crumble, especially when the current Congress is already controlled by Republicans.

There is not much that can be done to preserve Obamacare. Merrick Garland’s hopes have been dashed. It is only a matter of time before America’s immigration policies are rewritten.

What does Obama have left in this world? He has a gripe with the Prime Minister of Israel, and a UN determined to embarrass Israel in every possible way. He has a France bent on taking credit for creating a Palestinian state, backed in the effort by Europe, the Arab world, and others. He has a Secretary of State who has not yet gotten a Nobel Prize, an activist UN ambassador itching to reorder the world as she sees fit, a legacy of failure in Syria, Ukraine, and, many believe, Iran.

Palestinian statehood was not a major objective for Clinton. It is something she believes in, but when Arafat walked away from Camp David in 2000 the Clintons lost confidence in the Middle East.

Prior to election night, fears of a lame duck Hail Mary directed at Israel may have been somewhat alleviated by statements from the Obama administration, but prior to election night, there was little reason to expect Trump to win.

A Clinton presidency would have at least preserved the concept of Palestinian statehood. And now?

I am not making any predictions, especially ones of biblical proportions, but a bored president powerless before the imminent collapse of his universe with a world of friends dreaming of the opportunity to let loose the frustration that they and that Obama himself feel toward an Israel whose attack would be one of the only therapies available to the president whose party just got a stunning rebuke - just seems like a more dangerous scenario than what we seemed to have been dealing with all those previous times when the Obama administration was soothing fears of an anti-Israel lame duck Hail Mary.

After growing up in Pennsylvania, Baruch Stein has been living in Jerusalem for eight years. Previous articles of his have appeared in Arutz Sheva, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, and Haaretz.