There’s no cheering at the White House for Donald Trump’s success. Yet for President Barack Obama, things could be worse.
Trump’s ascent as the presumptive Republican nominee makes some of Obama’s main achievements more likely to survive after the next president takes over. Trump’s policy prescriptions, while full of contradictions and short on specifics, are generally closer to Obama’s than those of Trump’s closest GOP rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Where Cruz opposed Obama’s outreach to Cuba, Trump said it’s fine, though he would have handled it differently. Trump even has embraced a few essential elements of Obama’s health law, long the bane of the Republican Party. On gay and transgender rights, the New York businessman has taken a softer tone than Cruz and most of the other Republicans who sought the nomination, too.
To be sure, a Trump presidency would be bad news for most of Obama’s legacy. After all, Trump has said that Obama may go down as the worst president in history.
Trump has said that if he’s elected, he’ll terminate Obama’s immigration actions and build a wall on the border with Mexico. He rails against Obama’s trade deals and laughs off concerns about climate change, while saying he would repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reforms.
For Hillary Clinton, that’s Argument A why voters seeking to uphold Obama’s legacy should side with her.
From starting his political campaign on the back of a birther conspiracy about the president to promising to overturn the many accomplishments of the Obama administration, Donald Trump is too much of a risk for anyone who cares about President Obama’s legacy, said Jesse Ferguson, a Clinton campaign spokesman.
With Trump as the Republican nominee, Obama’s aides are more confident that Obama will be succeeded by a Democrat, a view bolstered by the deep fractures that Trump’s ascent is carving in the GOP. The big question at the White House is whether Trump can successfully recast himself in the general election without triggering backlash from voters seeking ideological purity.
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