Member-only story
If Barack Obama had run again in 2016, would you have voted for him?
I’m pretty sure I would have. The reasons why say a lot about our politics and our democracy
As unpleasant as it may be, pretend it’s the summer of 2016. Despite having clinched the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton has been forced to drop out of the presidential race a few weeks before the party’s convention in Philadelphia. As party leader, President Barack Obama is pondering his next step. He’s confident Bernie Sanders can’t defeat Donald Trump. Obama knows how difficult the job of president is and understands the risks of a Trump victory, but he also recognizes the importance of his country’s tradition of limiting presidents to two terms in office.
After weighing the trade-offs, at the Democratic National Convention that year Obama announces he’ll stand for a third term. Somehow, having found a workaround to the twenty-second amendment to the U.S. Constitution, he ends up on the ballot.
A few months later, you show up at your polling place. You support the Democratic platform and oppose Trump, but you’re uneasy about casting a vote to undermine one of America’s most celebrated traditions. What do you do? Do you vote to give a third term to a president for only the second time in the history of the country? Or…
