Lupica: Obama vs Trump, Cruz is the battle we want to see

We will never see the real campaign of this campaign, the debate you would pay money to watch, which is Barack Obama against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or both of them at once.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
It's unfortunate we'll never get to see Obama battle Trump and Cruz in a presidential campaign.

We will never see the real campaign of this campaign, the debate you would pay money to watch, which is Barack Obama against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or both of them at once. They aren’t running against Hillary or Bernie. They are running against the President. And in a way, even on his way out the door, he runs against them.

It would be interesting to see Trump or Cruz say the things they constantly say about this President, about how dumb he is, how weak he is, to his face. And then defend their vision of how the country should work, the country that Donald Trump says must be made great again, at the same time the President defends his own.

Really, it would be a pay-per-view event, having opponents of this President and everything he stands for go toe to toe with him and tell him why they know more about how to defeat ISIS than he does, more about health care than he does, and guns, and abortion, and trade, and all the rest of it.

This campaign isn’t about Hillary’s emails, or about Benghazi, or Bill Clinton’s women, or Bernie’s plan to tax everything that moves, or which Democrat is more “qualified” to succeed Obama as President. Hillary, especially, is merely the straw woman here, running for what so many believe would be Barack Obama’s third term.

This is about him against them.

That is the real story of the campaign season of 2016. You wonder if Trump would stand on a stage with the President and call him “Birther Barack,” the way he calls Cruz “Lyin’ Ted” and the way he called Marco Rubio “Little Marco.” It would be something to see, out in the open, the lack of respect the Republicans in this race have for this President, and the contempt he has for them.

JIM YOUNG/REUTERS
Would any of them continue talking tough to Obama's face?

Here is what the President said on Thursday night, at a Democratic Congressional Committee fund-raiser in Santa Monica:

“I recognize that there is a deep obsession right now about Mr. Trump. And one of you pulled me aside and squeezed me hard and said, ‘Tell me that Mr. Trump is not succeeding you.’ And I said, ‘Mr. Trump is not succeeding me.’ ”

“Mr. Trump has actually done a service, as Mr. Cruz is doing a service, and that is laying bare, unvarnished, some of the nonsense that we have been dealing with in Congress on a daily basis. People act as if these folks are outliers, but they are not! We should thank Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz for just being honest that this is how we’re thinking these days, or not thinking these days. But it gives you a sense of what’s at stake in this election.”

The Republicans have been going at him for months, especially when there were so many of them on the stage, mostly calling him weak, suggesting that they are smarter than him, better, tougher, even Chris Christie, now the toughest cheerleader around. So now the President goes at them.

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