i'm disappointed that obama released his long form birth certificate for a couple of reasons.
1...it allows trump to make hay out of how he "forced" obama to do something that no one else has done. actually, to be fair, i guess he did. while the birther nonsense is ridiculous to the point of insanity, i'll bet that there are any number of otherwise sane people who don't like obama for whatever reason that are blinded by the celebrity of trump and may confer unto him some type of credibilty that he obviously doesn't deserve. since that was all he was talking about, some people might have begun to think there was something to it. and i'm sure that's what the polls said so obama felt he had to address it.
2...by only focusing on the birther thing, trump was looking like an idiot to most serious republicans. now, it looks like he can force the debate and get things done. by aquiescing, obama made him something that he isn't...a serious contender.
From your perspective as an Obama supporter, I can see why you would be disappointed Obama acquiesced to Trump's demand for release of his birth certificate.
But the bottom line is, unless it was effective in undermining Obama's popularity and credibility --which it was-- Obama never would have relented and offered the actual birth certificate.
In hurting Obama, and in leveraging the birth certificate from Obama, I think Trump has shown he is underestimated --underestimated from both the Left AND Right-- in his political ability to get things done and to be taken seriously.
I think another target that is severely damaged by Trump's attacks is the media that never properly vetted Obama in the first place (Frank Marshall Davis, William Ayers, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, Andy Stern, Jeff Jones and the Apollo Alliance writing his legislation policy, etc...)
While the birth certificate thing was never taken seriously by many, on both political sides, it got people talking about Obama's personal history, and got them looking closely at where Trump was going in pursuing this.
And where it leads is the fact that the media never properly vetted Obama's personal history in the first place. That the media's negligence allowed Obama to be elected, allowed Obama to make the collossal presidential failures he is making now.
This not only undermines Obama, but subtly undermines the media (a k a, The Obama Ministry of Truth) that has previously and would continue to play defense for Obama. Trump has cleverly diminished the credibility of the media that would attack Trump, or would attack any Republican, over the next 18 months.
And this cracks the door open for Donald Trump --or others-- to go after not only Obama's presidential record, but also Obama's entire unvetted personal history from this point forward.
I still wonder if Trump really wants to be a candidate, or if he's just bloody-ing Obama, and will gladly step aside at some point to give other more "credible" Republicans a better political position from which to rally strength.
Regardless, up to this point, Trump has demonstrated a level of political cunning that even Republican strategists have underestimated.
As for the "credibility he doesn't deserve" part, Trump is estimated to have a personal fortune of about 7 billion. He is very successful in economics and negotiation, to get where he is.
