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With the former president recently making public comments triggering to the radical left including that all that hashtag woke activism isnt actually activism The Washington Post felt compelled togive Americans on the left side of the aisle a little more perspective on the man whose legislative legacy Donald Trump has almost completely wiped out. The reason Democratic presidential candidates have been struggling so hard to figure out how to discuss Barack Obama, David Swerdlick writes for the Post, is that Obama isnt what they think he is.

Perspective: Democratic presidential candidates still cant figure out how to talk about the most popular figure in their party, [Swerdlick] writes, and theres a simple reason, the Post tweeted Sunday. Barack Obama is a conservative.

As Swerdlick highlights, Obama has tweaked some of his fellow progressives in recent public comments about the flawed assumptions and approaches of Democrats and their supporters.

This idea of purity and youre never compromised and youre always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly, the former presidenttold a group of young activist at anObama Foundation Summit in Chicago in late October. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.

As if that wasnt enough to outrage the permanently outraged, Obama added a sobering reality check to those increasingly steering the party toward more overtly socialist policies: The Democratic presidential candidates would be wise to come back more to the center because [t]his is still a country that is less revolutionary than it is interested in improvement.

Its becoming increasingly clear, writes Swerdlick, that the leading Democratic contenders cant quite figure out how to talk about the most popular figure in their party, which poses a major problem because he casts a long shadow over the 2020 primary campaign:

Preserving Obamas legacy is the heart of former vice president Joe Bidens pitch to voters which has allowed his rivals to mark him as complacent. More left-leaning candidates, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), say the next president needs to do more to push for health-care reforms and combat income inequality but lately, shes struggling to sell her proposals. Onetime Obama Cabinet secretary Julin Castro has ripped his former bosss record on immigration and deportation. Meanwhile, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg raced to have a reporter correct a story that misquoted him citing failures of the Obama era. Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.) said in Wednesdays debate that its crucial to rebuild the Obama coalition because thats the last time we won. Picking and choosing which parts of Obamas tenure to embrace, and how firmly to embrace them, has become a delicate game in the primary season.

So why are they struggling to much to frame both their praise and criticism of The One? Because none of them have accepted what Swerdlick believes to be the hard truth about Obama.

Its because the former president, going back at least to his 2004 Senate race, hasnt really occupied the left side of the ideological spectrum, he insists. While he was of course no Republican, Obama never dramatically departed from the approach of presidents who came before him.

Theres a simple reason: Barack Obama is a conservative, Swerdlick declares. His evidence, that while Obama embraced left-wing positions like the Paris climate accords, Dodd-Frank, pro-choice policies, and same-sex marriage (after opposing it), his constant search for consensus ultimately made him be conservative on key domestic initiatives, like Obamacare and gun control, and foreign policy

The underlying concept for his signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, with its individual mandate, was devised by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and first implemented at the state level by Mitt Romney, then the Republican governor of Massachusetts. Obama wanted to protect Americans from the effects of a prolonged recession, so he agreed, in one of his defining votes as a senator, to a bailout of banks and as president, he prioritized recovery over punishing bankers for their role in the financial crisis. In his first inaugural address, he affirmed the power of the free market to generate wealth and expand freedom.

Until the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012, Obama studiously avoided any push for gun control. Indeed, in his first term, he signed laws that loosened restrictions on bringing firearms to national parks and on Amtrak. Though cast as a dithering peacenik who led from behind, he stuck with his thesis that the imperative to end the war in Iraq is to be able to get more troops into Afghanistan, and he prosecuted a drone war in Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

Obama was a conservative in the end, suggests Swerdlick, because he believes, fundamentally, that the American model works even if it hasnt been allowed to work for everyone.

Read the Posts Overton window-shifting perspective piece here.

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Washington Post: 'Obama Is A Conservative' - The Daily Wire

In a unanimous vote, at the Nov. 19 city council meeting, the Long Beach City Council approved a motion for a partnership with the Long Beach Community College District to provide free, non-credit and certificate courses at the Michelle Obama Neighborhood Library, for a period beginning from Feb. 6, 2020 through May 21, 2021.

According to a City staff report, this agreement will essentially create a program for a temporary satellite LBCC campus with dedicated space for college classes to be held for residents within the community (Program). This Program is an identified step in the Everyone In Plan, approved by the city council, to bring adult education to the north Long Beach area.

Courses will begin with the Spring semester and will take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am to noon. Each class will take three weeks to complete and may be offered back-to-back over a period of nine weeks. There will be no tuition or textbook costs, according to the report.

Courses are set to be determined in the coming weeks.

In an interview with the Signal Tribune, Cathy De Leon, manager of Branch Libraries at the Long Beach Public Library, said, We actually dont have those [courses] on the books yet, we literally have our meeting with the Long Beach City College starting next week, so were meeting with them some time early December, so we dont really have anything formalized yet, we just have the agreement in place.

There are no costs associated with the non-credit courses of the LBCC Program. The City will provide the use of the Michelle Obama Neighborhood Library facility free of charge to the LBCC. Nominal costs for promotional materials will be absorbed within the Library Services Departments budget.

The rest is here:
Non-credit college classes to be offered at the Michelle Obama Neighborhood Library beginning February 2020 - Signal Tribune

A few weeks ago, Lux Capital Partner Deena Shakir found herself showing a preschool class how to turn seed funding into a unicorn. This may seem impossible (after all, kids this age might not even understand the concept of money yet), but it was career day at her childrens preschool, and she wanted to share what she does.

So, she taught them the power of science and innovation with childrens book Ada Twist, Scientist and offered each child chia seeds. She then sat with them as they cultivated their seed funding into a unicorn-shaped chia pet that would eventually blossom.

Eleven years ago, Shakir never imagined shed be talking about venture capital at career day. Shed just delivered the speech From Baghdad to Boston: Dropping the Global H-Bomb at her Harvard graduation, started grad school at Georgetown, and was working a number of side hustles to fully fund her degree. Over the next decade, she held several different types of roles.

Screen Shot 2019-11-20 at 7.32.01 PM

She was a reporter for BBC and an Aga Khan Fellow at The Aspen Institute. She led public-private partnerships for USAID and was a Presidential Management Fellow in Secretary Clintons office at the State Department. Google recruited her to lead partnerships for emerging products, which she did for five years. And before joining Lux in August, she spent two years as a partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures).

Shakir has hit the ground running at Lux. Last month, she announced her first Lux investment in food tech startup Shiru and has since made another investment. She can confidently say theres nothing else shed rather be doing then venture investing. And she truly believes her nontraditional career path, specifically spending so much time as an operator building partnerships across sectors, is an important asset to the founders and CEOs she invests in.

Below, Shakir explains how being an operator and connector across industries for over 10 years offers tailwinds for her current role. Plus, the top three skills she believes founders should look for when evaluating a VC.

The Advantages of Having an Operator Background

Shakirs operating experience sparked her passion in the product world. At Google, she developed partnerships for early-stage products in a range of industrieshealthcare, retail, hardware, AI, and a whole lot more.

This partnership experience also provided her with a wide and deep network. It was her job to figure out who the best-in-class players were in each space, to engage them on behalf of Google, and to get their help launching the product. Today, these are the very same contacts she mobilizes for deal flow, diligence, potential executive hires, go-to-market, and more.

Being an operator for over a decade offered her experience building, negotiating, and closing deals across sectors, an incredibly valuable skill set for a VC.

Three Characteristics Founders Should Look for in a VC

While Shakir believes that there are a wide array of skills and qualities that can make you effective as an investor, there are three phenotypes that stick out to her that founders should seek when choosing a VC to partner with: the networker, the closer, and the coach. Heres why.

1. The Networker. A successful VC must be able to develop and maintain authentic relationships with people. It helps with sourcing new deals, deal flow, corporate and business development relationships, fundraising, you name it. Who you know, knowing what to ask and who to ask, and connecting the dots is a magical skill. A VC who will network on your behalf will add immeasurable value to your company.

2. The Closer. Pitching isnt just for startups these days. For the most competitive deals, its the VCs who have to do the pitching. Its one thing to get a seat at the table, but you also need to be able to close the deal. As a VC, youre always closing: on behalf of your portfolio companies (to corporate customers, partners, and future investors), to LPs, and, of course, to the companies who will give you the opportunity to invest in them. Screen for this quality as you would for a CRO on your team.

3. The Coach. Shakir strongly cautions against underestimating the human side of the job. Being an early stage investor is about more than crunching numbers. A good investor must be able to effectively read a room, to coach her CEOs through trying times, to evaluate the emotional state and motivations of founding teams, and to trust her gut. Building trusting relationships is best done through being real, authentic, and refreshingly transparentall qualities to seek in an investor.

Read more:
How This Lux Capital GP Went From The Obama Administration To Google To InvestorPlus, The Top 3 Characteristics Founders Should Look For In Investors...

Former U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally for Richard Cordray, Democratic nominee for governor of Ohio, in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 13, 2018.

Allison Farrand | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Barack Obama said on Thursday that technology has brought about greater inequality and made the public more divided, despite its potential.

The remarks reflect wider concerns about how central technology has become to modern life. Top technology companies such asFacebook, which runs platforms including Instagram and WhatsApp, and Google, which operates YouTube, now face antitrust scrutiny and regular criticism.

"If you follow one rabbit hole on YouTube," Obama told Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, the world can look different than if you were to go down another one. "Part of what happens is that people don't know what's true and what's not, and what to believe and what not to believe," Obama said.

"That's part of why we're having so much trouble in our political culture," he said. "But it's not just affecting politics. We are siloing ourselves off from each other in ways that are dangerous."

People who watch Fox News live in a different reality than those who read The New York Times, Obama said. He contrasted the current environment with that of his youth, when there were three television stations and people who watched the same shows would have common ground.

Obama said technology has led to considerable creation of wealth.

"How do we modulate that, so every kid has a good school, and nobody is homeless on the streets, and those that have been lucky are giving back in a serious way to pave the path for the next generation of success?" he said.

"We have not adjusted our social institutions to make sure we benefit from this huge rise in productivity that comes from technology."

Today's culture, accelerated by technology and social media, leads to the pursuit of the wrong things, Obama said.

"So much of the anger and frustration that is taking place right now has to be issues of status and, you know, 'I wanna be up here, let me put other people down there.'"

Benioff said that's why Salesforce has people teaching mindfulness.

"Makes a difference," Obama said.

WATCH: President Obama warns against information bias on the internet

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Obama: 'People don't know what's true' with YouTube and social media - CNBC

To the editor: I watched hours of impeachment hearings and found Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee were focused on eliciting kernels that can be popped into slogans like, Trump gave them Javelins, Obama gave them blankets.

The Trump administration providing Ukraine with anti-tank missiles has been universally praised by witnesses. In her testimony Thursday, however, former White House Russia advisor Fiona Hill qualified her support. Hill noted that during the Obama presidency, she had coauthored an op-ed article opposing the release of the Javelins, because she felt the Ukrainian military was not in a fit state to really take on board sophisticated weapons.

Hills counsel of restraint certainly resonated. At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin imprudently bestowed surface-to-air missiles to his untrained proxies in eastern Ukraine. The result was the downing of a commercial airliner.

Two years later, Hill came to support the release of Javelins to Ukraine. The change came after she joined the National Security Council and learned from partners at the Pentagon that the Ukrainian military was now a competent, sustainable force.

Perhaps the more accurate slogan would read, Obama laid the foundation, Trump took the credit.

Michael Hawkins, Newbury Park

..

To the editor: Heres a reply to the article that said U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland saved himself, not Trump: The president doesnt need saving.

The result of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiffs circus is preordained. The House of Representatives will impeach Trump regardless of testimony for or against the president.

Then the Senate will acquit. Any questions?

Michael Sanchez, West Hollywood

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Did Obama really send just blankets to the Ukrainians? - Los Angeles Times