Alfonse D'Amato

Obama’s speech ended as it began, with a dream

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President Obama delivered his final State of the Union address on Jan. 12, and the race to replace him has tightened on both sides.

Who would have believed that at this point in the race, Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders would be ahead in Iowa? Sometimes politics can truly amaze you — or bewilder you, depending on what side you’re on.

On Jan. 14, the Republicans held another debate, featuring a heated standoff between Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz. Cruz accused Trump of being a New Yorker. Despite that harsh criticism (ha!), Trump continues to hold a narrow lead over Cruz in Iowa, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll.

And for the first time since September, Sanders leads Hillary Clinton in a major Iowa poll. Quinnipiac has Sanders receiving 49 percent of the likely caucus votes, compared with Clinton’s 44 percent.

Sanders maintains a commanding 30-point lead among male voters, who favor his character traits and values over Clinton’s.

But back to the State of the Union speech. It was much like Obama’s presidency: big on dreams and out of touch with reality.

You wonder why Americans are gravitating en masse to candidates like Trump and Sanders? It’s because they’re sick and tired of politics as usual. If you ask Americans right now what the top issue facing this nation is, it would overwhelmingly be national security, both at home and overseas. Yet Obama failed to lay out any real plan for how the U.S. is going to finally defeat the Islamic State.

Instead, the president once again downplayed the imminent ISIS threat and decried politicians who he claims “insult Muslims.” Obama continues to take this “junior varsity” approach to ISIS, almost mocking the terrorists by saying that their propaganda would lead us to believe that they are “masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks, twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages that pose an enormous danger to civilians.”

Guess what, Mr. President? That’s exactly what they are, and they continue to prove it time and time again.

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