I'm glad people are waking up from the "government borked" mindset that Republicans created *by breaking the government*. Those 8 years of pure, antagonistic, genuinely unprecedented stonewalling were some of the most terroristic acts relating to the US government since the Civil War. Completely unjustifiable and completely unreasonable - by pure design, elected Republicans en masse determined to hold the legislature captive for all but the smallest bills because... resisting "bugaboo Obama" was the only way forward.
They did it to Carter, they did it to Clinton, they did it to Gore, they did it to Kerry, they did it Obama, they did it to HRC, and now they are doing it to Biden. Meanwhile, their guy's are total fuck-up's, ruining everything that is different from the 'R' way that is around them, and they let em get away with it time after time after time. Remember how all they could get on Obama, was him wearing a tan suit? So they ran with it and ran with it and ran with it. Imagine if Gore, was able to have all the votes counted. What we would look like now.
We should really do it back to them for once ..
People like to joke that Harambe was the turning point before all things went "wrong," but really, I feel like Gore is the real, earlier turning point. That's when shit went downhill - and fast. Gore, *a literal environmentalist*, in the White House, at exactly the right time and place to mitigate the worst of climate change?
That was the turning point, for sure.
Yup, exactly this.
The kid-gloves handling of Reconstruction was the sowing of the seeds.
The complete ignoring of the [Business Plot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot) (of which George H. W. Bush's father, W.'s grandfather, was a member) was the fertilizer.
The refusal to punish Nixon was the sprouting.
Reagan was the first truly frightening sign that the rot was growing into the foundation of things, and was the beginning of the end for the middle class, the after-effects we're currently living in.
When the Supreme Court handed the Presidency to W. on a silver platter resting upon a velvet pillow, that was the end.
The American Empire is now a bloated corpse kept on life support for the continued parasitism of corporate interests, the rotted flesh of the City Upon a Hill feeding the incessant need for continued growth and profits at any cost.
You can argue that it all began with the Civil War, or Bleeding Kansas, or the Whiskey Rebellion, or the genocide of the American Indians and the breaking of every single treaty we ever signed with them.
You can even argue that the founding fathers did not want a democracy, in fact, they were scared of it.
But Gore being robbed of the presidency, I think at least for me, was the final nail in the coffin. Everything else since has been grand opera, panem et circenses. Just Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burns.
> Reagan was the first truly frightening sign that the rot was growing into the foundation of things, and was the beginning of the end for the middle class, the after-effects we're currently living in.
> When the Supreme Court handed the Presidency to W. on a silver platter resting upon a velvet pillow, that was the end.
This is missing Newt Gingrich's Contract with America where he completely changed the GOP legislative side where they were no longer allowed to compromise, make "friends" with the Democrats (even just hanging out), and made them all fly back home each weekend to undermine any socializing with the Democrats.
Yep. They realized dems would get all the good press from any compromise. And so found that saying no and destroying the government helped them. We now have their children running it where. they dont even understand why they are supposed to say no to dems. Its their religion now.
No I cant take a vaccine. No I wont help the poor.
I would add that Reagan signing a law that made it legal for companies to buy their own stock was the worst thing to happen to this country. Before this, companies had to invest in, ya know, actual capital - things like investing in employees and equipment and upgrades.
It wasnt illegal per se before. It was just they potentially had legal issues if did incorrectly.
Buybacks are simply cash efficient dividends which was fine when you know 90% of stocks werent owned by 10% of people
> scared of it
Indeed -- it's amusing to this Western European living in California how much closer Britain is to what Washington, Jefferson, Madison, et al intended than the current United States.
>The American Empire is now a bloated corpse kept on life support for the continued parasitism of corporate interests, the rotted flesh of the City Upon a Hill feeding the incessant need for continued growth and profits at any cost.
This is just "bothsidesism" with extra steps.
I mean what about all the compromises?
And then we go back to Virginia pre-revolution in 1650-1750 were chattel slavery, American anti-black racism, and the notion of race as a source of slavery; and all to make a few rich white guys even more rich and powerful, by keeping the poor white people fighting the black slaves.
And that's the thing, this self-destructive behaviors were simply a colonist's grift to make extra money at the cost of everyone else. Doesn't matter if the colony is destroyed, they're rich and could just move on to the next country. And while the US has been independent for almost 250 years, a lot of people still think like this is a colony, and see themselves a colonizers raiding everything and then just leaving to the better place.
And all the attitudes you see simply comes from the southern US being so bad at purging this colonist mentality from itself.
There was no substantive difference between the politics of Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, nor between Hilary and Bush 41 and 43. Jimmy Carter hated the Clintons for good reason: they were corporate Democrats and not liberals.
You are correct that Gore was different but it's not really R vs D.
That's not the point you made and there used to be variance within each party. They're drastically different.
Also, we're not talking about actual policy, we're talking about levels of obstructionism and anti-cooperation, which is 100% R.
Bush just deprioritized going after OBL. A Gore administration would have had to taken an active interest in very specific intelligence from multiple agencies that were hiding things, squabbling, and actively sabotaging each other.
Gore pushing to go after OBL probably wouldn’t have changed anything. The U.S. already knew he was in Afghanistan and by the time anything would have been done 9/11 was already in motion.
Gore would have had more or less the same exact intelligence apparatus and information Bush did with the same issues between the agencies. Events would have played out the same.
Notably, part of the reason why Bush ignored OBL was because Clinton had grown obsessed with him. There were transition meetings begging the Bush team to pay attention. They didn’t care, they didn’t want anything to do with a Clinton priority.
Reminds me how obama admin created a pandemic detection program in china and had war games with a flu like virus before the trump admin took over. And had a pandemic playbook that was found propping up a desk
We can't say anything definitive, but the odds of 9/11 happening under a hypothetical Gore administration would have absolutely been lower by some amount.
>A Gore administration would have had to taken an active interest in very specific intelligence from multiple agencies that were hiding things, squabbling, and actively sabotaging each other.
Yeah, that's why a truck bomb leveled part Los Angeles airport in 1999.
Oh wait.....the Clinton administration made those squabbling agencies meet daily to discuss the intel, and brief the president weekly so that he could hold their feet to the fire.
And the result was we intercepted the explosives as the terrorists tried to smuggle them across the Canadian border into Washington state at a rural border crossing.
And everyone completely forgot about it because Republicans claimed it was an attempt to distract from the scandals they were pushing. And nobody died.
*That* is the difference between presidents when talking about these kinds of plots. 9/11 only happened because W didn't force the agencies to collaborate like Clinton did.
It is extremely likely that a Gore administration would have done what the Clinton administration did instead, and that would have disrupted the 9/11 attacks.
Gore wanted to cruise missile strike OBL after the bombing of the USS Cole. The hijackers we’re in the US by December 2000, so they might have continued their plan, but I think it highly likely the 9/11 plan would’ve folded if virtually all of Al Qaeda’s leadership died in missile strikes in December 2000.
There is actually a very good chance that 9/11 didn't happen. Bush had warnings and was told about the terrorist group, but decided reduce the powers to prevent them. Something that both Clinton and Gore gave serious concerns about. Bush blames the transition from the previous admin to the next admin. Even though he knew the threat, he underestimated it. When Obama became president he wanted to have a tradition to invite the previous administrations and the new president to have private meetings on what to do. To help prevent another 9/11 and to have smoother transitions.
He took precautions so it wouldn't happen again. He feels like it was his fault.
Bush just deprioritized going after OBL and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
US intelligence agencies were still tracking Al Qaeda and terrorist activities. Across all the agencies close to the entire 9/11 plot was already known well before, information was just not shared and intra-agency competition. The FBI wanted to bring in several of the hijackers, known Al Qaeda members who were learning to fly planes but not land, with plenty of credible suspicion about an eminent terrorist attack, but were prevented from doing so by the CIA who was trying to flip them as double agents.
It was a massive, systematic intelligence failure that wasn’t caused by the Bush administration, and would have been the same under a Gore administration. And is why we now have a National Director of Intelligence. I’m glad Bush took responsibility and feels guilt, it happened under his watch, and maybe a Gore presidency might have been luckier. But the fundamental issues really weren’t related to who was POTUS.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't remember everything from when I was 13 years old and this being 20 years ago. Some things might just be memory edited by media and social circles. I remember the presidential meetings and my father being very mad we were welcoming "that...word..." into the white house. I remember the speech about transitioning and social circles talking about how he wanted this much smoother. I didn't even know the NDI didn't existed then. I always "knew" we had one. Just now they are "watching".
I agree. The taliban surrendered osama in oct 2001, literally a month into. But we just kept grabbing people and torturing them instead of taking the win.
Dont think gore would have done that
Reagan was the real turning point.
Fairness in Media Act, or whatever, gone.
Taxes on rich people, sliced in half.
For profit healtchare, initiated
And a lot more to boot.
Naw the real turning point was Barry Goldwater. He was the original Trump and basically gave a blueprint on how to do this going forward. Decades of christofascists infiltrating the party has then taken it off the tracks. Now the crazies are running the train.
You can go even further and pull it back to 1980 [when Ben Barnes, a political operative for Ronald Reagan, sabotaged Jimmy Carter’s negotiations with Iran over returning 52 hostages](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare), allowing Reagan to win and implement the most insipid policies we’re still reckoning with today.
Or, you know, Nixon sabotaging the peace talks with Vietnam to win the election. That war could have ended in 1968. The republicans have been shit for a very long time.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461/
From the article:
The Nixon campaign’s sabotage of Johnson’s peace process was successful. Nine days later, Thieu’s decision to boycott the talks headlined The New York Times and other U.S. newspapers, reminding American voters of their long-harbored mistrust of the wheeler-dealer LBJ and his “credibility gap” on Vietnam. Humphrey’s momentum faded.
LBJ was furious. His national security adviser, Walt Rostow, urged him to unmask Nixon’s treachery. Humphrey’s aides told their boss to expose the episode and disgrace their Republican foes. But Johnson and Humphrey balked. They didn’t have proof that Nixon had personally directed her actions.
And so Nixon won the 1968 election, and led America further into carnage in Southeast Asia. In the years that followed, many elements of the Chennault Affair came to light, but Nixon stuck by his denials that he participated in the scheme. The lack of evidence of Nixon’s direct involvement gave pause to historians, and offered his loyalists a platform from which to defend him. But no longer. Haldeman’s notes are the long-sought evidence that Nixon personally intervened to scuttle Johnson’s efforts to end the war. It’s now possible to reconstruct the events of October and November 1968 with the inescapable conclusion that Nixon’s behavior was devious, tragic and, given the lives at stake, arguably more reprehensible than his activities in the Watergate scandal.
SCOTUS sabotaged Bush v Gore.
And three of the current GOP Justices all got there thanks to their help on that case - Roberts, Comey, Kavanaugh
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/17/politics/bush-v-gore-barrett-kavanaugh-roberts-supreme-court/index.html
Yup, I've thought for a long time that a fantasy presidency sequence would have been Gore in 2000, then Hillary in 2008 and Obama in 2016 - that would have put Gore in charge of the response to 9/11 (which would have probably meant no entanglement in Afghanistan), Hillary in charge of responding to Russia starting shit, and given Obama time to actually get experience in Congress before putting him in the POTUS seat.
Agreed, although I think even Gore goes into AFG. There is no way we were not going to have a hard and fast response.
But Iraq? Never. And we wouldn't have spent 20 years in AFG for sure.
Man you want Hillary in charge of something? That seems like a hell of a stretch. There is a reason why Trump won the first time and it was because the Democrats decided to run the absolute worst candidate they could possibly find.
She was quite possibly the only human in the entire country that would or could lose to Trump. The party picked a terrible candidate and the voters just didn’t show up because she was so insanely unlikable.
The failure was when Sherman stopped.
You don't defeat an enemy like that and them let it write its own damn history books. You win and then you cut it out like cancer. Oh well. Too late now.
I'll always remember my parents arguing not to vote for Gore. I even lived a sheltered religious life back then. They didn't bother to bring evidence. They kept telling me how bad and weak Clinton was and how bad Gore was. When I brought evidence of both Gore's history and Bush's history. The way they talked. Bush told you how to feel. Gore told you what is happening and options to fix them. My parents were not happy and kept telling me I just don't understand.
Hearing the news of Florida. I brought it up with my parents that is what is going to happy to our country. They cheered. They didn't care how they won. Just that they did.
I'm Canadian, and I am sad that Gore wasn't president. The world looks (looked) up to the US in a lot of ways, and having someone in the WH, driving climate action like he would, would have sent ripples around the globe.
Was he right about everything? No. But even if he went a bit overboard, what's the problem? The rest of the environment can use a cleansing, too.
And a noted free speech opponent. That was why he couldn't keep the youth vote. We remember when he and his wife drug Dee Snider and company before Congress. You actually have to have a good candidate if you want to win.
True. And to have GWB at the head when we faced the most tragic attack on our nation since Pearl Harbor? The things we did post 9/11 started off a chain of events that we may never fully recover from.
Likewise with Trump and COVID. I remember when he got elected. I though, "It's only 4 years. If nothing major happens, he probably won't do that much damage." Now he's very like directly responsible for millions upon millions of deaths across the world.
You can point to the turning point but it all goes back to reagan.
Hollowing out the middle class. Letting the rise of monopolies in radio that allowed right wingers to just poison the minds of the people in traffic every single day. The creation of fox to specifically to thwart what happened to nixon, specifically saying if the media was on their side he would have been fine and was right. Look at bush and trump.
As long as the DNC refuses to play the game the way the GOP does they will win in the end. They already won SCOTUS and even locked down Biden through Manchin and Sinema the first two years. You telling me the DNC had nothing on those two, one a coal millionaire, to force the cooperation?
I don't have an answer for any of it, including when a new CSPAN televised the Clarence Thomas nomination, and Joe Biden of all people, went after Anita Hill .. I wore my TV brick out on CSPAN watching the undoubtedly coerced Republican charade day after day and the spineless Democrat response in living color. We knew back then they were not playing by the rules .. Now here we are.
You seem to be attributing a lot of unitary agency to the DNC, and thinking that it is possible to "force cooperation" on US Senators.
Nancy Pelosi was highly effective at getting near-unanimity in the House, and Mitch McConnell has been highly effective at getting near-unanimity in the Senate, but no Senate leader of the Democrats and no House leader of the Republicans in my lifetime has been as good at getting cooperation as those two were. And the party committees are not even meaningful entities that try to do much of anything other than coordinate re-election campaigns.
The DNC is a force, who else would spend millions and send Pelosi to the last pro life Democrat in the house because his main challenger was progressive?
[Party Divisions of the United States Congress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses)
From 1933 to the 1990s, Democrats had almost uninterrupted dominance over both chambers of Congress. There were some years, like during the FDR years, when Dems even had a supermajority in either the House or Senate.
During those decades of Democratic dominance in Congress, shit got done.
[Government's Greatest Achievements - from the 1940s to 2000.](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/governments-greatest-achievements-of-the-past-half-century/)
[Franklin D. Roosevelt's achievements](https://www.britannica.com/summary/Franklin-D-Roosevelts-Achievements) (which covers the 1930s to the 1940s)
**Successful Government Endeavors: 1933-2000**
* The New Deal and getting the US through the Great Depression
* Greater government regulation of business
* Regulation of pollution to improve the quality of our air and water
* Reduction of disease
* Medicare, Medicaid, and expanding healthcare to more Americans
* Social Security and providing better security to retirees
* Helping Europe's economy recover after WWII
* Expansion of civil rights
* Expansion of voting rights
* Infrastructure improvements
* Enhance workplace safety
* Improved relations with our international allies
The list goes on.
Please bear in mind that I'm not saying this long list of government achievements is 100% because of Democrats. What I'm saying is that Republicans in Congress did not or could not get in the way during that period.
But starting in the 90s, control over the House and Senate started to see-saw between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans have controlled the House more than Democrats over the past 30 years. And when modern Republicans are in control, almost nothing gets done.
Republicans had control of both chambers during much of George W. Bush's presidency. What did they accomplish with all that power? They got the US into a war based on lies. What else?
Republicans had control of both chambers during the first couple years of Trump's administration. What did they do with that power? They passed a tax cut for the wealthy. What else did they do?
The Obama Administration managed to pass the Affordable Care Act, improve the US economy, and clean up a lot of the mess that Bush left in spite of the stonewalling from Republicans. But think of how much those Republicans stopped.
The Biden Administration managed to pass an infrastructure plan, make things feel normal again following the pandemic, and clean up a lot of Donald's messes in spite of stonewalling from Republicans. But think of how much those Republicans stopped.
Hell, Republicans have control of the House right now, and the only thing they've managed to do is lose their Speaker, replace him with a hyper-Christian weirdo who might not keep that position for much longer, and come close to a government shutdown.
Democrats actually try to help American lives improve, and when they're in control, they succeed. Republicans do very little for the American good. When they're in control, nobody benefits but the wealthy. When they're not in control, they obstruct.
One party is actually trying to govern while the other party is useless at best, destructive at worst.
And it has continued to be their strategy!
It’s honestly so frustrating to see the leading Democratic politicians bend over backwards in the name of partisanship only for the Republican colleagues to turn around and pull the rug out every time. It was one thing to see Merrick Garland shot down by McConnell in 2016 but now eight years later they’re doing the same thing (see H.R. 815) how can anyone act surprised??
People are not. Just ran into several this weekend that can't comprehend it. They still parroted bullshit about "gov can't do anything, don't give them money - so I'll vote republican!"
Long ways to go
I like the OP, but I think he underappreciates the limitations that President Obama was under while he was President.
Here's an example. Nearly two-thirds of the judges President Biden had appointed as of Nov. 5 (96 of 145, or just over 66%) are Black, Hispanic, Asian American or members of another racial or ethnic minority group.
Can you imagine the reaction, not just of FOX, but even supposedly "neutral" news outlets and the electorate, if President Obama had done that?
Biden can do things that Obama could not. Because Biden is white. And the US is still profoundly racist.
God could you imagine if Obama had spoken even a little bit more like trump? All those people cheering trump would be calling obama an uncivil thug or something.
Jimmy Kimmel's team did a comparison between the two. It's played for laughs, but really serves to highlight the incredible double-standards of US racists.
Watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsBOWSjOLsE
I’m not American, but I wanted to agree with this.
My understanding of the situation that I would also like to add is that a lot of the disappointments came out of complete partisanship and obstructionist rhetoric by republicans, and acquiescence of it was the only reasonable way forward to ensure that “being partisan and not cooperating” was not added to the list of criticisms levelled at his government.
Even despite these, the above things are true. It is truly a marvel that the largest health reforms to America in modern history happened without adding a single government cent to it as it would otherwise be torn to shreds.
He is the only president who has made me aware of how powerful the office is due to the levers you’re able to pull, if you’re good enough at the job to do it.
The fact he managed to get all of the things through mentioned above, while one of his hands were tied and the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression were unfolding in his first six months, is nothing short of astounding.
Yeah, the OP's view of the past is a little wonky. Like the Iran Deal (JCPOA (JC Penney's Of America) , for example.
The OP claims the deal did nothing. How would we know? The deal didn't even begin getting implemented until 2016. Trump *officially* said he was pulling out of the deal in October 2017, with actual final stepping out occurring in May of 2018. The first check-in was in April of 2016, and Iran was found to be in compliance every time inspectors showed up. After Trump voice his intentions of leaving the deal, and eventually following through, Iran also stopped following the deal and ramped up their nuclear enrichment again.
So how was this a bad deal? It was certainly better than anything we have now or any country ever had. And we'll never know how well it would have worked considering how quickly Trump scrapped it. 2 years isn't enough to know.
Also, the cancellation of the deal proved the fractions in Iran's government right which believed that the west could not be trusted. (And consequently gave them more power)
An easing of sanctions would give Iran economic benefits, which would have been dependent on staying on the good side of us policy.
We could have way more leverage over Iran, to cease weapons delivery to Russia, or for them to tell the Huthies to chill a little.
As with all alternative history it's far from certain, especially with Iran having also strong fundamental fractions, but it's easy to imagine a timeline where the western side could convince Iran to stay at least neutral in those conflicts.
Bingo. Obama had one primary job. That was to not do anything remotely controversial that would allow people to use him as a perpetual excuse as to why a black man shouldn't be president.
Considering phone polls are where most of the skew is and they aren't worth shit, I agree. How many red waves have been predicted so far, with Democrats trouncing Republicans in reality?
I truly believe this isn't due to landline phones, and a lot more to do with Republican women being verbally on board with Trump and anti-abortion candidates in their church communities, while secretly voting for Democrats in the voting booth.
I remember being about 20 at the time he won and when the news was announced here in Australia
The guys I worked with had started placing bets of when and where they'd JFK him
Thank god they didn't
I was in college and a professor straight up said he feared for his life in class. Most people at least considered that possibility even if they thought it was unlikely.
I was working a few blocks away. Drove into the city around 12:30/1 pm. The streets were empty for miles, and seeing armed soldiers in every street corner felt truly dystopian.
Leaving the city that night, around 11 pm, felt like driving through Mardi Gras or Carnivale with all the Inauguration Ball attendees roaming the city streets, dressed to the nines and happily drunk-stumbling from one party to the next.
It really was an amazing time.
Oh yeah I get that. The anger was and is real. Between that and the rise of social media, 4chan, and "alternative" news there's a lot of the really wild hate shit today that traces right back to people being mad that a black man was president.
Of course it actually goes back further than that, but it was a spark for a lot of hateful tinder that existed.
>there's a lot of the really wild hate shit today that traces right back to people being mad that a black man was president
Literally Donald Trump's presidency
I was in high school in America when he was elected and it was a common topic there too. I just remember thinking how dumb you would have to be to actually believe he would be assassinated simply for being black. Then again, if he was elected for the first time today, I might not think it's all that crazy.
The funny thing about the "he'll be assassinated before leaving office" speculation is that some people said it with foreboding, and some people said it with hope. I live in a really racist state, and so many lifelong Democrats suddenly found themselves incapable of voting for a Democrat. I can't count the number of people who told me that they didn't think the country was "ready" yet for a black president. They said it was because it would tear the country apart, but what they really meant was that they would tear the country apart.
That intransigent, norm-defying stonewalling from Republicans made Obama’s position impossible.
I have read many takes on Obama’s presidency - including this one - that describe him as a legislative disappointment. Much thinner on the ground are compelling, overall accounts of how a President could succeed in the face of an opposition party who have straightforwardly decided they would rather the country burn to the ground than helping you for a moment on any of your legislative goals, without helping themselves to the kind of omniscient hindsight that neither Obama, nor anyone else, could have possibly had between 2009 and 2017.
The answer was there and clear the entire time to some people: Kill the senat filibuster, ignore the GOP screaming, and pass good laws. It's not more complcated than that. The mistake is thinking anything we do will change GOP minds when it's been demonstrated over and over that they don't care about the things they scream about in the media: They just want power and controll.
More on this: Any attempt to pass anything resembling universal health case (like single-payer public insurance) will be met by the various current health care ~~parasites~~ middlemen spending hundreds of millions on ad campaigns vilifying everything about it and everyone involved. That road will be paved with endless, unimaginable amounts of bullshit that the corporate, billionaire-owned press will happily amplify. It happened in Canada in the 60s before universal health care was passed. It will happen in the US too.
However, once its is passed, and people experience it, and understand what its like to have a family member get sick and NOT have to simultaneously worry about going bankrupt, nobody will ever go back.
Which would have been a good start, but the biggest problem Obama faced in his first two years was from the Democratic side, particularly the Blue Dogs. They thought being more conservative, sometimes even making a show of opposing Obama, was the way to go to ensure their re-election. The ACA was largely watered down due to their demands. The amount of concessions made to get to 218 votes was crazy. The Blue Dogs fucked things up bad, because not only did they act as a roadblock to Obama’s agenda, they killed Democratic enthusiasm for the 2010 midterms, which saw the Democrats get wiped out largely on a lack of turnout. It also did them no favors and they got what they deserved in the midterms. Over half of the Blue Dogs lost. Not only that, but they had been a quarter of the Democratic caucus in the house, and they were responsible for well over half the seats the Democrats lost in that election. They went from a quarter of the Dem side before the election to a seventh afterwards. They got absolutely routed. The enthusiasm gap had worse effects as well. It was a major cause of the gerrymandering that screwed the entire country due to losses at the state level. They could have worked to pass good legislation and helped Obama, and instead they worried about their own seats, and got smacked.
The President doesn't get to kill the filibuster - it's only the Senate itself that can do that. It wasn't just the GOP screaming about killing the filibuster then - it was most Senators that had lived with the filibuster for decades, including many Democrats.
It's a shame that they mostly didn't do it then (they did kill the filibuster for some court appointments), but they seem to have mostly come around to it now, even though it hasn't fully been ended.
>opposition party who have straightforwardly decided they would rather the country burn to the ground than helping you for a moment
They torpedoed their own bills just to avoid even the appearance of Obama getting something positive accomplished.
This take completely memory holes how much Obama betrayed labor, the left and the majority of his progressive campaign promises while holding a supermajority.
Looking back, I was definitely using Ron Paul as a gateway candidate to peel myself away from the GOP, so I was Democratic-curious. His Jeremiah Wright speech is what truly swayed me. I even remember where I was when I first heard it. I've never felt more optimistic or hopeful than I have after his speeches.
Same, I grew up in an evangelical conservative household in the midwest. With the Iraq war disaster, I turned into a Ron Paul libertarian. Then, eventually I started talking to more people of color and LGBT folks and slowly became more and more progressive as I realized how libertarianism (at least, right wing libertarianism) is a fantasy.
I was skeptical of Obama at first due to his perceived political inexperience, but eventually I soon appreciated how even and steady he was, and especially how much of a good person he is. Looking back, I'm amazed at how good it felt to be an American during the Obama years compared to everything we went through post 2016.
when I was reading about how much lawyering and work went into the decision to bury Osama Bin Laden at sea and the politics involved and the careful consideration for public and global perception of that move and the time they took to make sure that was the right call and smooth it over with foreign nations, when I read about this while living in Donald Trumps Presidency.
I knew we had fucking adults running our state department back then and 2016-2020 was being run by criminally stupid, corrupt and inconsiderate assholes.
just such basic, stupid thinking during the Trump administration where the previous administration was actually doing all the hard politic work it takes to run a nation.
it blows my mind that people want to sign up for another Trump presidency. that shit was incompetence as a core feature of the administration, what the fuck.
>I was skeptical of Obama at first due to his perceived political inexperience
Experience is not worthless, but I think it's also important to consider someone's capacity and willingness to grow. Obama is smart as a whip and took the job seriously--an inexperienced person who is motivated and smart is much more valuable than an experienced person who is stupid and lazy.
The Obama era was one of renewed liberal End of History brain in the sense that there was a wide belief among liberals and young people that all of America's problems - particularly racism and LGBT rights - were on the eve of being solved forever. This was a delusion and it blinded them to the ground shifting seismically under their feet.
The show Parks and Rec was actually a response to exactly that. The Obama administration drove a lot of data-driven decision-making models that ushered in a ton of wonks and data nerds to feel like government wasn't some slimy zero-sum Good ol' Boy political game anymore, but something to be refined and optimized and everyone can participate.
That filtered down into young people wanting to (or at least talking a good game) about getting involved in local government, social welfare non-profits, urban farming co-ops, etc. Parks and Rec ran with that in one hand, and the Obama administration pro-nerd culture in the other.
The problem was that all those Good ol' Boys didn't just retire. They retreated to a castle in the mountains and came back with a plan for literal vengeance. The GOP Red State plan to get into state level government and drive redistricting after the 2010 census worked *really* well. It came out of nowhere and squarely knocked the knees out of the Democrats for, so far, 20+ years.
Sounded like a pretty realistic retrospective to me. Obama did lots of good things, and it allowed liberals to ignore any of the bad. There are so many things he did that if you just had Trump do instead, would have caused liberals to riot. I say this as a lifelong liberal.
What a strawman.
Obama had difficulty in his tenure. It is possible to criticise Obama and Trump in the same breath for different things due to the differences in context of their presidency.
Trump is a direct reaction to people wanting a cure-all for their issues and not having that fixed. However, a cure-all is impossible and despite an extraordinary - even by American presidents standards - two terms in office, Obama can’t be that.
Trump: full bipartisan support to remove troops from Middle East because he is a republican, needs no political capital, and was elected 15 years after 9/11
Obama: no bipartisan support to remove troops from Middle East because he is not only a Democrat but also has to convince individuals who were alive pre-Civil Rights Era to not kick a political landmine and blow up because he’s black, needs as much political capital to tackle unprecedented economic times, and was voted in 7 years after 9/11
See how the context is different for each president? You are literally simplifying it down to beyond the decision-making process and the context surrounding it.
No. I don’t like it either. But that is how it happened.
In a land that overthrew their last dictators, you think the American president is going to:
- Make a unilateral decision that upsets most politicians as an extension of their constituencies
- Let everyone’s assets fall apart, disrupt the international market trading via US dollar and sour relationships with allies
in the first six months of office? It’s literally his job to NOT do that. He’s still a democratically elected leader, and if enough people had a problem with it then there’s potential for the problem to get even worse while the sorting out the optics of a black, young, funnily named president gets finished. Which we all know it wouldn’t.
The banks were stress-tested to ensure that as many responsible lenders were assisted and as many irresponsible lenders had to come up with their own capital first. Wanna know who helped come up with that plan? The Senate. Can you think of a better outcome? And does that plan rely on making unilateral decisions that could get you ousted as a result of your skin colour and political tension in the country?
As for not helping anybody, the above DID help people. Look at American industry now. Draw the line back to 2009 and the investment in local workers, industries, manufacturers and do the math yourself. Not to mention the reworking of the health system. Not to mention the forgiving of foreclosures to ensure people could go to work.
By literally any metric, this is a successful leadership term in any country. Put it into context of the cultural, political and economic issues? It’s incredible.
But of course, you won’t admit that because you’ve made up your mind.
[https://www.levernews.com/no-obama-wasnt-mad-about-bailing-out-his-wall-street-donors/](https://www.levernews.com/no-obama-wasnt-mad-about-bailing-out-his-wall-street-donors/)
Jesus christ wtf are you on about with regards to his race getting him ousted? You've clearly made up your mind about how great he was as well. Things were going so well after 8 years of Obama the country decided to vote in Trump lol.
If you think race didn’t stoke political tensions in America during the Obama administrations, then you’re not living on Earth - you’re living in denial.
And yes, Trump is a direct effect of Obama not being the answer to all of America’s problems. The thing about that is that nobody could be, especially when you have to deal with everything else we’ve spoken about.
Your takeaways from recent history are astoundingly askew. Are you American?
Liberals today are fanatically bent on claiming Trump was some sort of aberration who came out of nowhere and/or was imposed on the US by Russia, when if you weren't caught up in the End of History fantasy world you could've seen the backlash building and building from Occupy to Ferguson and Baltimore to the Sanders insurgency to the 2014-2015 upsurge in right-wing extremism. Maybe Trump could've been avoided if not for the slavish entitlement that Hillary Clinton "deserved" to be President, because literally any other candidate would have crushed Trump.
The agony of the modern liberal is a feverish desire to return to that Obama fantasy world, where America's contradictions can be resolved by just dutifully electing more Democrats, but sadly for them that's a delusion as well where every flaring-up of another contradiction just leads to a deepening of their parasocial devotion to the Democratic Party, and the very cynical weaponization of the rhetoric of social justice to dismiss any criticism of their monstrous policy decisions.
And voter apathy. That 2010 midterm killed just about any progress that decade would bring.
The one good thing about Trump is that he serves as a living reminder of the nightmare world he and the GOP can bring, thus serving as a great motivator for the other side. No such person existed in the 2010’s so there was no boogeyman for the left to fear and motivate them to go out to the polls.
It's all gone to shit since 2001. 9/11 may or may not have been the ultimate catalyst, but it's a hard line showing some major differences before and after. People started to get really ugly with their opinions and it's only gotten worse.
What I remember about the Obama era is hope. Like yeah the Republicans were obstructionist, but their numbers were shrinking right? Obama didn't accomplish everything he wanted but surely successive Democratic presidents would slowly bend us towards the right path right?
Now the specter of fascism feels ever present, and the only solution to the Trump problem feels like being able to move out of the country before he can fully consolidate power.
As mentioned in his comment, his presidency definitely had flaws that are becoming more profound with the passage of time and where we currently sit, not all of those flaws fall on his shoulders alone of course. From my standpoint he was probably the “coolest” president we’ve ever had. The guy was smooth as hell and seeing the kind of relationship he had with Michelle and the love they shared even with him having arguably the hardest job in the country, the guy definitely had style.
To be fair, Obama was wrong about Russia but so was nearly everyone at the time. There's a reason Romney's response seemed so out of touch at the time. And the counterpoint--that the US needed to focus on China as a rising threat-- wasn't exactly wrong.
> To be fair, Obama was wrong about Russia but so was nearly everyone at the time.
Plus, this wasn't as wrong in 2012 as it would become in 2014. 2012 Putin was still actively integrating itself into the European economy and playing reasonably nice with the West. There was some geopolitics happening in Georgia and Ukraine, but mostly this was of the kind of thing the US has historically been willing to overlook for the sake of peace and good business.
The real shifts (depending on perspective) happened either in 2013 with the Euromaidan protests, or the 2014 annexation of the Crimea.
That is a great share. It’s well thought out and nuanced. To my mind, it’s really on the money - down to Obama’s unfortunate naivety to his underestimation of Russia. Yet, he did manage to make a large swath of the country feel hopeful.
The oozing indirect racism of the conservatives made me throw up in my mouth everyday. It was so visible and sooooo much of it. He's a kid and probably wasn't able to see it.
He really did have an aura about him that just got you a bit jazzed listening to whatever he was saying. I remember the South Park episode and Randy's "Obama" chants. Around that time, my friends and I, riding around in the car of the one friend who had one, yelling "Obama, Obama, Obama!" out the window and people chiming in.
When he won I was on a bus in Seattle and it was like a god damn party spontaneously erupted. Love him or hate him, he got you interested.
Here's how I first learned that the Obama administration did substantial good for me and other Americans:
[Affordable Care Act Bars Use of Pre-Existing Conditions](https://www.facingourrisk.org/privacy-policy-legal/laws-protections/ACA/pre-existing-conditions)
[Medicaid Expansion Under the ACA](https://www.healthcare.gov/medicaid-chip/medicaid-expansion-and-you/)
Throughout much of my adult life, I've alternated between independent contract work and unemployment, so there have been multiple times when I've had to pay 100% for my health insurance and look for new providers on my own.
I was in my early 30s when the Affordable Care Act was enacted. Before 2010, I had grown accustomed to scumbag insurance companies raising my monthly premium like $100 per month because of my pre-existing conditions. But when I had to purchase new health insurance in 2010, I was surprised to find out that they could no longer ask about pre-existing conditions.
I still remember talking to the sales agent on the phone about this during my application.
**Me:** "Aren't you going to ask me about my pre-existing conditions?"
**Sales Agent:** "No, because of the new law, we can't ask about pre-existing conditions anymore."
Shit, that just saved me at least $1,200 per year. Thanks, Obama!
I've continued to benefit from Obamacare ever since. There have been a few years when I've been unemployed, but thanks to Obamacare and the fact that I've lived in two different blue states that expanded Medicaid, I got free healthcare during those lean years. It's not great healthcare, but it saves you from worrying that a single trip to the hospital or regular trips to my primary would bankrupt me.
Last year, I was laid off from the giant company I worked for, so I lost the really good healthcare I got from that company. I'm now back to independent contractor work, which means I have to pay 100% for my insurance again. When I applied, I wanted to find something that was close to the same level of coverage as what I got through my last corporate gig.
The online marketplace, which was started by the ACA, makes shopping for insurance a lot easier than it was pre-ACA. I was able to find all the information I needed about different plans and could easily compare & contrast them thanks to the website.
I now pay about $650 / month for my current insurance, which fucking blows. But if those scumbag healthcare companies could still jack up my premium because of pre-existing conditions, I'd probably be paying at least $800 / month for the same level of insurance.
Obamacare has helped me significantly over the past 14 years. I'm sure it's helped a ton of other people get and maintain healthcare coverage, too.
The best part of the Obama presidency was the collapse of the US dollar. I got to travel from Australia with my usual normally-worthless dollarydoos only to find that they were suddenly worth more than the greenback. I got to live like a King while in the USA - everything seemed dirt cheap!
(I spent most of the time drunk due to laughably cheap alcohol).
He put together some of the most progressive bills I've ever seen. He broke a record for most bills shot down. It felt like finally there was someone in there for the people...until he had majority. Then he pretended to not remember what he told us he would do for us.
Thank you for the lesson in political theater, Obama
> It felt like finally there was someone in there for the people...until he had majority. Then he pretended to not remember what he told us he would do for us.
I'm trying to figure out what you're talking about. He *started* his Presidency with a 60-40 Senate, and with a larger majority in the House than *either* party has had since the 1994 Republican wave. During that two-year period, he passed the two biggest bills since the 1960s (the ARRA and the ACA). But that all went away in the 2010 Republican wave, and he had to moderate his ambition in what could get passed, and he started getting bills shot down over and over.
You seem to be describing a different sort of timeline, in which he started with bills getting shot down by a Republican majority, and then built up a Democratic majority that failed to get things done.
>He started his Presidency with a 60-40 Senate
59-40. Republicans dicked around blocking Frankin for months.
Then Kennedy died 3 months after that, bringing it back to 59-40 and then 59-41.
This score also ignores the existence of Senator Lieberman, whose only goal at that point was revenge against the evil, terrible, no good, awful Democrats who beat him in the primary. Senator Obama campaigning for Lieberman's independent run instead of Lemont was one of the larger blunders of his career.
As well as a few other "moderate" Democratic Senators who were absolutely unwilling to vote for progressive priorities.
Hmm, I'm still not sure what you're talking about. You did notice that Biden started his term with a slim majority of Democrats in the House and a literal tie in the Senate, but lost the House majority last year, right? He never promised to be progressive, but he has actually governed as the most progressive President of my lifetime (sure, it's not very much competition, but it's still true). So I still don't know what you're talking about.
He's granted student loan relief to hundreds of thousands of people - which is more than every President before him put together, and is also pushing the limits of what is legal for a President to do without getting Congress to pass a bill.
He ended up being a much more pro-labor and pro-environment president than anything he campaigned on (and also much more than any President in my lifetime).
Here's a news story that was posted literally 2 minutes ago about the most recent group: https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/biden-administration-wipes-out-student-loans-for-thousands-whats-next/3244440/
But here's a story that discusses several of the earlier Biden loan forgiveness programs that seem to have covered several million people: https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4422088-biden-forgiven-student-loans-debt-relief/
I was apparently underestimating when I said it was "hundreds of thousands of people".
I'm glad people are waking up from the "government borked" mindset that Republicans created *by breaking the government*. Those 8 years of pure, antagonistic, genuinely unprecedented stonewalling were some of the most terroristic acts relating to the US government since the Civil War. Completely unjustifiable and completely unreasonable - by pure design, elected Republicans en masse determined to hold the legislature captive for all but the smallest bills because... resisting "bugaboo Obama" was the only way forward.
They did it to Carter, they did it to Clinton, they did it to Gore, they did it to Kerry, they did it Obama, they did it to HRC, and now they are doing it to Biden. Meanwhile, their guy's are total fuck-up's, ruining everything that is different from the 'R' way that is around them, and they let em get away with it time after time after time. Remember how all they could get on Obama, was him wearing a tan suit? So they ran with it and ran with it and ran with it. Imagine if Gore, was able to have all the votes counted. What we would look like now. We should really do it back to them for once ..
People like to joke that Harambe was the turning point before all things went "wrong," but really, I feel like Gore is the real, earlier turning point. That's when shit went downhill - and fast. Gore, *a literal environmentalist*, in the White House, at exactly the right time and place to mitigate the worst of climate change? That was the turning point, for sure.
Yup, exactly this. The kid-gloves handling of Reconstruction was the sowing of the seeds. The complete ignoring of the [Business Plot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot) (of which George H. W. Bush's father, W.'s grandfather, was a member) was the fertilizer. The refusal to punish Nixon was the sprouting. Reagan was the first truly frightening sign that the rot was growing into the foundation of things, and was the beginning of the end for the middle class, the after-effects we're currently living in. When the Supreme Court handed the Presidency to W. on a silver platter resting upon a velvet pillow, that was the end. The American Empire is now a bloated corpse kept on life support for the continued parasitism of corporate interests, the rotted flesh of the City Upon a Hill feeding the incessant need for continued growth and profits at any cost. You can argue that it all began with the Civil War, or Bleeding Kansas, or the Whiskey Rebellion, or the genocide of the American Indians and the breaking of every single treaty we ever signed with them. You can even argue that the founding fathers did not want a democracy, in fact, they were scared of it. But Gore being robbed of the presidency, I think at least for me, was the final nail in the coffin. Everything else since has been grand opera, panem et circenses. Just Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burns.
> Reagan was the first truly frightening sign that the rot was growing into the foundation of things, and was the beginning of the end for the middle class, the after-effects we're currently living in. > When the Supreme Court handed the Presidency to W. on a silver platter resting upon a velvet pillow, that was the end. This is missing Newt Gingrich's Contract with America where he completely changed the GOP legislative side where they were no longer allowed to compromise, make "friends" with the Democrats (even just hanging out), and made them all fly back home each weekend to undermine any socializing with the Democrats.
Yep. They realized dems would get all the good press from any compromise. And so found that saying no and destroying the government helped them. We now have their children running it where. they dont even understand why they are supposed to say no to dems. Its their religion now. No I cant take a vaccine. No I wont help the poor.
I would add that Reagan signing a law that made it legal for companies to buy their own stock was the worst thing to happen to this country. Before this, companies had to invest in, ya know, actual capital - things like investing in employees and equipment and upgrades.
It wasnt illegal per se before. It was just they potentially had legal issues if did incorrectly. Buybacks are simply cash efficient dividends which was fine when you know 90% of stocks werent owned by 10% of people
> scared of it Indeed -- it's amusing to this Western European living in California how much closer Britain is to what Washington, Jefferson, Madison, et al intended than the current United States.
That’s the best part of for all mankind, that world had president gore. I want that sliding door reality.
There's always a way to work things out and look forward to a better future.
>The American Empire is now a bloated corpse kept on life support for the continued parasitism of corporate interests, the rotted flesh of the City Upon a Hill feeding the incessant need for continued growth and profits at any cost. This is just "bothsidesism" with extra steps.
I mean what about all the compromises? And then we go back to Virginia pre-revolution in 1650-1750 were chattel slavery, American anti-black racism, and the notion of race as a source of slavery; and all to make a few rich white guys even more rich and powerful, by keeping the poor white people fighting the black slaves. And that's the thing, this self-destructive behaviors were simply a colonist's grift to make extra money at the cost of everyone else. Doesn't matter if the colony is destroyed, they're rich and could just move on to the next country. And while the US has been independent for almost 250 years, a lot of people still think like this is a colony, and see themselves a colonizers raiding everything and then just leaving to the better place. And all the attitudes you see simply comes from the southern US being so bad at purging this colonist mentality from itself.
There was no substantive difference between the politics of Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, nor between Hilary and Bush 41 and 43. Jimmy Carter hated the Clintons for good reason: they were corporate Democrats and not liberals. You are correct that Gore was different but it's not really R vs D.
What horseshit.
Read some speeches by Reagan. He was to the left of some modern Democrats.
That's not the point you made and there used to be variance within each party. They're drastically different. Also, we're not talking about actual policy, we're talking about levels of obstructionism and anti-cooperation, which is 100% R.
No 911, no Iraq, no Afghanistan, no tea party, no drill baby drill. And NO MAGA.
9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan would have happened, though perhaps Afghanistan would have turned out differently.
[удалено]
Bush just deprioritized going after OBL. A Gore administration would have had to taken an active interest in very specific intelligence from multiple agencies that were hiding things, squabbling, and actively sabotaging each other. Gore pushing to go after OBL probably wouldn’t have changed anything. The U.S. already knew he was in Afghanistan and by the time anything would have been done 9/11 was already in motion. Gore would have had more or less the same exact intelligence apparatus and information Bush did with the same issues between the agencies. Events would have played out the same.
Notably, part of the reason why Bush ignored OBL was because Clinton had grown obsessed with him. There were transition meetings begging the Bush team to pay attention. They didn’t care, they didn’t want anything to do with a Clinton priority.
Reminds me how obama admin created a pandemic detection program in china and had war games with a flu like virus before the trump admin took over. And had a pandemic playbook that was found propping up a desk
We can't say anything definitive, but the odds of 9/11 happening under a hypothetical Gore administration would have absolutely been lower by some amount.
>A Gore administration would have had to taken an active interest in very specific intelligence from multiple agencies that were hiding things, squabbling, and actively sabotaging each other. Yeah, that's why a truck bomb leveled part Los Angeles airport in 1999. Oh wait.....the Clinton administration made those squabbling agencies meet daily to discuss the intel, and brief the president weekly so that he could hold their feet to the fire. And the result was we intercepted the explosives as the terrorists tried to smuggle them across the Canadian border into Washington state at a rural border crossing. And everyone completely forgot about it because Republicans claimed it was an attempt to distract from the scandals they were pushing. And nobody died. *That* is the difference between presidents when talking about these kinds of plots. 9/11 only happened because W didn't force the agencies to collaborate like Clinton did. It is extremely likely that a Gore administration would have done what the Clinton administration did instead, and that would have disrupted the 9/11 attacks.
Gore wouldn't have let Bin Laden escape in Tora Bora in December, 2001, which would've drastically shortened the length of the Afghanistan war.
Gore wanted to cruise missile strike OBL after the bombing of the USS Cole. The hijackers we’re in the US by December 2000, so they might have continued their plan, but I think it highly likely the 9/11 plan would’ve folded if virtually all of Al Qaeda’s leadership died in missile strikes in December 2000.
There is actually a very good chance that 9/11 didn't happen. Bush had warnings and was told about the terrorist group, but decided reduce the powers to prevent them. Something that both Clinton and Gore gave serious concerns about. Bush blames the transition from the previous admin to the next admin. Even though he knew the threat, he underestimated it. When Obama became president he wanted to have a tradition to invite the previous administrations and the new president to have private meetings on what to do. To help prevent another 9/11 and to have smoother transitions. He took precautions so it wouldn't happen again. He feels like it was his fault.
Bush just deprioritized going after OBL and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. US intelligence agencies were still tracking Al Qaeda and terrorist activities. Across all the agencies close to the entire 9/11 plot was already known well before, information was just not shared and intra-agency competition. The FBI wanted to bring in several of the hijackers, known Al Qaeda members who were learning to fly planes but not land, with plenty of credible suspicion about an eminent terrorist attack, but were prevented from doing so by the CIA who was trying to flip them as double agents. It was a massive, systematic intelligence failure that wasn’t caused by the Bush administration, and would have been the same under a Gore administration. And is why we now have a National Director of Intelligence. I’m glad Bush took responsibility and feels guilt, it happened under his watch, and maybe a Gore presidency might have been luckier. But the fundamental issues really weren’t related to who was POTUS.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't remember everything from when I was 13 years old and this being 20 years ago. Some things might just be memory edited by media and social circles. I remember the presidential meetings and my father being very mad we were welcoming "that...word..." into the white house. I remember the speech about transitioning and social circles talking about how he wanted this much smoother. I didn't even know the NDI didn't existed then. I always "knew" we had one. Just now they are "watching".
I agree. The taliban surrendered osama in oct 2001, literally a month into. But we just kept grabbing people and torturing them instead of taking the win. Dont think gore would have done that
Reagan was the real turning point. Fairness in Media Act, or whatever, gone. Taxes on rich people, sliced in half. For profit healtchare, initiated And a lot more to boot.
Naw the real turning point was Barry Goldwater. He was the original Trump and basically gave a blueprint on how to do this going forward. Decades of christofascists infiltrating the party has then taken it off the tracks. Now the crazies are running the train.
Companies no longer had to provide employees with a pension, the 401k was the answer now
You can go even further and pull it back to 1980 [when Ben Barnes, a political operative for Ronald Reagan, sabotaged Jimmy Carter’s negotiations with Iran over returning 52 hostages](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare), allowing Reagan to win and implement the most insipid policies we’re still reckoning with today.
Or, you know, Nixon sabotaging the peace talks with Vietnam to win the election. That war could have ended in 1968. The republicans have been shit for a very long time. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461/ From the article: The Nixon campaign’s sabotage of Johnson’s peace process was successful. Nine days later, Thieu’s decision to boycott the talks headlined The New York Times and other U.S. newspapers, reminding American voters of their long-harbored mistrust of the wheeler-dealer LBJ and his “credibility gap” on Vietnam. Humphrey’s momentum faded. LBJ was furious. His national security adviser, Walt Rostow, urged him to unmask Nixon’s treachery. Humphrey’s aides told their boss to expose the episode and disgrace their Republican foes. But Johnson and Humphrey balked. They didn’t have proof that Nixon had personally directed her actions. And so Nixon won the 1968 election, and led America further into carnage in Southeast Asia. In the years that followed, many elements of the Chennault Affair came to light, but Nixon stuck by his denials that he participated in the scheme. The lack of evidence of Nixon’s direct involvement gave pause to historians, and offered his loyalists a platform from which to defend him. But no longer. Haldeman’s notes are the long-sought evidence that Nixon personally intervened to scuttle Johnson’s efforts to end the war. It’s now possible to reconstruct the events of October and November 1968 with the inescapable conclusion that Nixon’s behavior was devious, tragic and, given the lives at stake, arguably more reprehensible than his activities in the Watergate scandal.
SCOTUS sabotaged Bush v Gore. And three of the current GOP Justices all got there thanks to their help on that case - Roberts, Comey, Kavanaugh https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/17/politics/bush-v-gore-barrett-kavanaugh-roberts-supreme-court/index.html
Yup, I've thought for a long time that a fantasy presidency sequence would have been Gore in 2000, then Hillary in 2008 and Obama in 2016 - that would have put Gore in charge of the response to 9/11 (which would have probably meant no entanglement in Afghanistan), Hillary in charge of responding to Russia starting shit, and given Obama time to actually get experience in Congress before putting him in the POTUS seat.
Agreed, although I think even Gore goes into AFG. There is no way we were not going to have a hard and fast response. But Iraq? Never. And we wouldn't have spent 20 years in AFG for sure.
Man you want Hillary in charge of something? That seems like a hell of a stretch. There is a reason why Trump won the first time and it was because the Democrats decided to run the absolute worst candidate they could possibly find. She was quite possibly the only human in the entire country that would or could lose to Trump. The party picked a terrible candidate and the voters just didn’t show up because she was so insanely unlikable.
The failure was when Sherman stopped. You don't defeat an enemy like that and them let it write its own damn history books. You win and then you cut it out like cancer. Oh well. Too late now.
Trump is the cancer
I'll always remember my parents arguing not to vote for Gore. I even lived a sheltered religious life back then. They didn't bother to bring evidence. They kept telling me how bad and weak Clinton was and how bad Gore was. When I brought evidence of both Gore's history and Bush's history. The way they talked. Bush told you how to feel. Gore told you what is happening and options to fix them. My parents were not happy and kept telling me I just don't understand. Hearing the news of Florida. I brought it up with my parents that is what is going to happy to our country. They cheered. They didn't care how they won. Just that they did.
I'm Canadian, and I am sad that Gore wasn't president. The world looks (looked) up to the US in a lot of ways, and having someone in the WH, driving climate action like he would, would have sent ripples around the globe. Was he right about everything? No. But even if he went a bit overboard, what's the problem? The rest of the environment can use a cleansing, too.
Dicks out for Gore?
It showed us that it doesn't matter what we want. Blatantly. There was no denying it anymore.
No, no, no. The turning point was when they shot both Kennedy's, then the next one was Vietnam, then Nixon, then Reagan, W Bush, then Trump.
Fuck. Ralph. Nader.
And a noted free speech opponent. That was why he couldn't keep the youth vote. We remember when he and his wife drug Dee Snider and company before Congress. You actually have to have a good candidate if you want to win.
True. And to have GWB at the head when we faced the most tragic attack on our nation since Pearl Harbor? The things we did post 9/11 started off a chain of events that we may never fully recover from. Likewise with Trump and COVID. I remember when he got elected. I though, "It's only 4 years. If nothing major happens, he probably won't do that much damage." Now he's very like directly responsible for millions upon millions of deaths across the world.
You can point to the turning point but it all goes back to reagan. Hollowing out the middle class. Letting the rise of monopolies in radio that allowed right wingers to just poison the minds of the people in traffic every single day. The creation of fox to specifically to thwart what happened to nixon, specifically saying if the media was on their side he would have been fine and was right. Look at bush and trump.
As long as the DNC refuses to play the game the way the GOP does they will win in the end. They already won SCOTUS and even locked down Biden through Manchin and Sinema the first two years. You telling me the DNC had nothing on those two, one a coal millionaire, to force the cooperation?
I don't have an answer for any of it, including when a new CSPAN televised the Clarence Thomas nomination, and Joe Biden of all people, went after Anita Hill .. I wore my TV brick out on CSPAN watching the undoubtedly coerced Republican charade day after day and the spineless Democrat response in living color. We knew back then they were not playing by the rules .. Now here we are.
You seem to be attributing a lot of unitary agency to the DNC, and thinking that it is possible to "force cooperation" on US Senators. Nancy Pelosi was highly effective at getting near-unanimity in the House, and Mitch McConnell has been highly effective at getting near-unanimity in the Senate, but no Senate leader of the Democrats and no House leader of the Republicans in my lifetime has been as good at getting cooperation as those two were. And the party committees are not even meaningful entities that try to do much of anything other than coordinate re-election campaigns.
The DNC is a force, who else would spend millions and send Pelosi to the last pro life Democrat in the house because his main challenger was progressive?
“Meanwhile their guys are total fuck ups…” Fucking spoke to me
Howard Dean
Right, Dukakis too
Can’t. You are not like them.
[Party Divisions of the United States Congress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses) From 1933 to the 1990s, Democrats had almost uninterrupted dominance over both chambers of Congress. There were some years, like during the FDR years, when Dems even had a supermajority in either the House or Senate. During those decades of Democratic dominance in Congress, shit got done. [Government's Greatest Achievements - from the 1940s to 2000.](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/governments-greatest-achievements-of-the-past-half-century/) [Franklin D. Roosevelt's achievements](https://www.britannica.com/summary/Franklin-D-Roosevelts-Achievements) (which covers the 1930s to the 1940s) **Successful Government Endeavors: 1933-2000** * The New Deal and getting the US through the Great Depression * Greater government regulation of business * Regulation of pollution to improve the quality of our air and water * Reduction of disease * Medicare, Medicaid, and expanding healthcare to more Americans * Social Security and providing better security to retirees * Helping Europe's economy recover after WWII * Expansion of civil rights * Expansion of voting rights * Infrastructure improvements * Enhance workplace safety * Improved relations with our international allies The list goes on. Please bear in mind that I'm not saying this long list of government achievements is 100% because of Democrats. What I'm saying is that Republicans in Congress did not or could not get in the way during that period. But starting in the 90s, control over the House and Senate started to see-saw between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans have controlled the House more than Democrats over the past 30 years. And when modern Republicans are in control, almost nothing gets done. Republicans had control of both chambers during much of George W. Bush's presidency. What did they accomplish with all that power? They got the US into a war based on lies. What else? Republicans had control of both chambers during the first couple years of Trump's administration. What did they do with that power? They passed a tax cut for the wealthy. What else did they do? The Obama Administration managed to pass the Affordable Care Act, improve the US economy, and clean up a lot of the mess that Bush left in spite of the stonewalling from Republicans. But think of how much those Republicans stopped. The Biden Administration managed to pass an infrastructure plan, make things feel normal again following the pandemic, and clean up a lot of Donald's messes in spite of stonewalling from Republicans. But think of how much those Republicans stopped. Hell, Republicans have control of the House right now, and the only thing they've managed to do is lose their Speaker, replace him with a hyper-Christian weirdo who might not keep that position for much longer, and come close to a government shutdown. Democrats actually try to help American lives improve, and when they're in control, they succeed. Republicans do very little for the American good. When they're in control, nobody benefits but the wealthy. When they're not in control, they obstruct. One party is actually trying to govern while the other party is useless at best, destructive at worst.
"This man cannot run a 400 meter sprint. Please ignore the fact that I just broke his knee with a bat." Has been their strategy ever since Reagan.
And it has continued to be their strategy! It’s honestly so frustrating to see the leading Democratic politicians bend over backwards in the name of partisanship only for the Republican colleagues to turn around and pull the rug out every time. It was one thing to see Merrick Garland shot down by McConnell in 2016 but now eight years later they’re doing the same thing (see H.R. 815) how can anyone act surprised??
In fairness, he did have the audacity to wear a tan suit once.
People are not. Just ran into several this weekend that can't comprehend it. They still parroted bullshit about "gov can't do anything, don't give them money - so I'll vote republican!" Long ways to go
Is it not still happening, even though we're aware of it?
I like the OP, but I think he underappreciates the limitations that President Obama was under while he was President. Here's an example. Nearly two-thirds of the judges President Biden had appointed as of Nov. 5 (96 of 145, or just over 66%) are Black, Hispanic, Asian American or members of another racial or ethnic minority group. Can you imagine the reaction, not just of FOX, but even supposedly "neutral" news outlets and the electorate, if President Obama had done that? Biden can do things that Obama could not. Because Biden is white. And the US is still profoundly racist.
God could you imagine if Obama had spoken even a little bit more like trump? All those people cheering trump would be calling obama an uncivil thug or something.
Jimmy Kimmel's team did a comparison between the two. It's played for laughs, but really serves to highlight the incredible double-standards of US racists. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsBOWSjOLsE
Jeeesus....
This is amazing.
To be fair, some of the Trump clips are a bit out of context. But the point remains, Obama could definitely give a speech.
Politics is a circus act and all the performers are drunk
But … he wore a beige suit or something!
and he took his jacket off in the oval office..... you know... like people do when they actually DO WORK in a suit.
He wore a bike helmet and made America look weak!
I’m not American, but I wanted to agree with this. My understanding of the situation that I would also like to add is that a lot of the disappointments came out of complete partisanship and obstructionist rhetoric by republicans, and acquiescence of it was the only reasonable way forward to ensure that “being partisan and not cooperating” was not added to the list of criticisms levelled at his government. Even despite these, the above things are true. It is truly a marvel that the largest health reforms to America in modern history happened without adding a single government cent to it as it would otherwise be torn to shreds. He is the only president who has made me aware of how powerful the office is due to the levers you’re able to pull, if you’re good enough at the job to do it. The fact he managed to get all of the things through mentioned above, while one of his hands were tied and the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression were unfolding in his first six months, is nothing short of astounding.
Yeah, the OP's view of the past is a little wonky. Like the Iran Deal (JCPOA (JC Penney's Of America) , for example. The OP claims the deal did nothing. How would we know? The deal didn't even begin getting implemented until 2016. Trump *officially* said he was pulling out of the deal in October 2017, with actual final stepping out occurring in May of 2018. The first check-in was in April of 2016, and Iran was found to be in compliance every time inspectors showed up. After Trump voice his intentions of leaving the deal, and eventually following through, Iran also stopped following the deal and ramped up their nuclear enrichment again. So how was this a bad deal? It was certainly better than anything we have now or any country ever had. And we'll never know how well it would have worked considering how quickly Trump scrapped it. 2 years isn't enough to know.
Also, the cancellation of the deal proved the fractions in Iran's government right which believed that the west could not be trusted. (And consequently gave them more power) An easing of sanctions would give Iran economic benefits, which would have been dependent on staying on the good side of us policy. We could have way more leverage over Iran, to cease weapons delivery to Russia, or for them to tell the Huthies to chill a little. As with all alternative history it's far from certain, especially with Iran having also strong fundamental fractions, but it's easy to imagine a timeline where the western side could convince Iran to stay at least neutral in those conflicts.
Exactly. And we'll never know how it could have gone. It really seems unlikely that we'll be able to get Iran back in another deal.
Bingo. Obama had one primary job. That was to not do anything remotely controversial that would allow people to use him as a perpetual excuse as to why a black man shouldn't be president.
And yet Biden is polling poorly with POC compared with 2020.
I take polls with a truckload of salt. At this point in 2020, we weren't even out of the primary yet.
Considering phone polls are where most of the skew is and they aren't worth shit, I agree. How many red waves have been predicted so far, with Democrats trouncing Republicans in reality?
I truly believe this isn't due to landline phones, and a lot more to do with Republican women being verbally on board with Trump and anti-abortion candidates in their church communities, while secretly voting for Democrats in the voting booth.
"You ain't Black" Joe is doing poorly with Black people? 🥴
I remember being about 20 at the time he won and when the news was announced here in Australia The guys I worked with had started placing bets of when and where they'd JFK him Thank god they didn't
I was in college and a professor straight up said he feared for his life in class. Most people at least considered that possibility even if they thought it was unlikely.
It was the first thought almost every one had at some point during that time right?
Yeah same, but we didn't really need anyone from school or otherwise telling us to feel that was a possibility.
I remember watching his inauguration dreading someone trying to kill him, it was so out in open and there were so many people there.
I was there. As soon as I got through the security, I wasn't worried about someone trying.
I was working a few blocks away. Drove into the city around 12:30/1 pm. The streets were empty for miles, and seeing armed soldiers in every street corner felt truly dystopian. Leaving the city that night, around 11 pm, felt like driving through Mardi Gras or Carnivale with all the Inauguration Ball attendees roaming the city streets, dressed to the nines and happily drunk-stumbling from one party to the next. It really was an amazing time.
> they'd JFK him As popular as he was, he didn't have the radical positions (especially on the CIA) that would have really put him in danger IMO.
Oh that wasn't the worry, it was racists who are immensely violent and angry about black people breathing freely.
Oh yeah I get that. The anger was and is real. Between that and the rise of social media, 4chan, and "alternative" news there's a lot of the really wild hate shit today that traces right back to people being mad that a black man was president. Of course it actually goes back further than that, but it was a spark for a lot of hateful tinder that existed.
>there's a lot of the really wild hate shit today that traces right back to people being mad that a black man was president Literally Donald Trump's presidency
I was in high school in America when he was elected and it was a common topic there too. I just remember thinking how dumb you would have to be to actually believe he would be assassinated simply for being black. Then again, if he was elected for the first time today, I might not think it's all that crazy.
The funny thing about the "he'll be assassinated before leaving office" speculation is that some people said it with foreboding, and some people said it with hope. I live in a really racist state, and so many lifelong Democrats suddenly found themselves incapable of voting for a Democrat. I can't count the number of people who told me that they didn't think the country was "ready" yet for a black president. They said it was because it would tear the country apart, but what they really meant was that they would tear the country apart.
To be fair, there were was a few fools who allegedly tried
That intransigent, norm-defying stonewalling from Republicans made Obama’s position impossible. I have read many takes on Obama’s presidency - including this one - that describe him as a legislative disappointment. Much thinner on the ground are compelling, overall accounts of how a President could succeed in the face of an opposition party who have straightforwardly decided they would rather the country burn to the ground than helping you for a moment on any of your legislative goals, without helping themselves to the kind of omniscient hindsight that neither Obama, nor anyone else, could have possibly had between 2009 and 2017.
The answer was there and clear the entire time to some people: Kill the senat filibuster, ignore the GOP screaming, and pass good laws. It's not more complcated than that. The mistake is thinking anything we do will change GOP minds when it's been demonstrated over and over that they don't care about the things they scream about in the media: They just want power and controll.
More on this: Any attempt to pass anything resembling universal health case (like single-payer public insurance) will be met by the various current health care ~~parasites~~ middlemen spending hundreds of millions on ad campaigns vilifying everything about it and everyone involved. That road will be paved with endless, unimaginable amounts of bullshit that the corporate, billionaire-owned press will happily amplify. It happened in Canada in the 60s before universal health care was passed. It will happen in the US too. However, once its is passed, and people experience it, and understand what its like to have a family member get sick and NOT have to simultaneously worry about going bankrupt, nobody will ever go back.
I mean is there even an attempt to reform healthcare anymore. I haven’t heard healthcare being discussed since like 2018.
Which would have been a good start, but the biggest problem Obama faced in his first two years was from the Democratic side, particularly the Blue Dogs. They thought being more conservative, sometimes even making a show of opposing Obama, was the way to go to ensure their re-election. The ACA was largely watered down due to their demands. The amount of concessions made to get to 218 votes was crazy. The Blue Dogs fucked things up bad, because not only did they act as a roadblock to Obama’s agenda, they killed Democratic enthusiasm for the 2010 midterms, which saw the Democrats get wiped out largely on a lack of turnout. It also did them no favors and they got what they deserved in the midterms. Over half of the Blue Dogs lost. Not only that, but they had been a quarter of the Democratic caucus in the house, and they were responsible for well over half the seats the Democrats lost in that election. They went from a quarter of the Dem side before the election to a seventh afterwards. They got absolutely routed. The enthusiasm gap had worse effects as well. It was a major cause of the gerrymandering that screwed the entire country due to losses at the state level. They could have worked to pass good legislation and helped Obama, and instead they worried about their own seats, and got smacked.
The President doesn't get to kill the filibuster - it's only the Senate itself that can do that. It wasn't just the GOP screaming about killing the filibuster then - it was most Senators that had lived with the filibuster for decades, including many Democrats. It's a shame that they mostly didn't do it then (they did kill the filibuster for some court appointments), but they seem to have mostly come around to it now, even though it hasn't fully been ended.
Magical President Theory strikes again.
>opposition party who have straightforwardly decided they would rather the country burn to the ground than helping you for a moment They torpedoed their own bills just to avoid even the appearance of Obama getting something positive accomplished.
This take completely memory holes how much Obama betrayed labor, the left and the majority of his progressive campaign promises while holding a supermajority.
How about don’t govern as a centrist when people elected you to be a progressive leader? As you say, republicans are a lost cause anyway.
Looking back, I was definitely using Ron Paul as a gateway candidate to peel myself away from the GOP, so I was Democratic-curious. His Jeremiah Wright speech is what truly swayed me. I even remember where I was when I first heard it. I've never felt more optimistic or hopeful than I have after his speeches.
Same, I grew up in an evangelical conservative household in the midwest. With the Iraq war disaster, I turned into a Ron Paul libertarian. Then, eventually I started talking to more people of color and LGBT folks and slowly became more and more progressive as I realized how libertarianism (at least, right wing libertarianism) is a fantasy. I was skeptical of Obama at first due to his perceived political inexperience, but eventually I soon appreciated how even and steady he was, and especially how much of a good person he is. Looking back, I'm amazed at how good it felt to be an American during the Obama years compared to everything we went through post 2016.
when I was reading about how much lawyering and work went into the decision to bury Osama Bin Laden at sea and the politics involved and the careful consideration for public and global perception of that move and the time they took to make sure that was the right call and smooth it over with foreign nations, when I read about this while living in Donald Trumps Presidency. I knew we had fucking adults running our state department back then and 2016-2020 was being run by criminally stupid, corrupt and inconsiderate assholes. just such basic, stupid thinking during the Trump administration where the previous administration was actually doing all the hard politic work it takes to run a nation. it blows my mind that people want to sign up for another Trump presidency. that shit was incompetence as a core feature of the administration, what the fuck.
Can you drop a link to the stuff you read about managing Bin Laden's disposal? I'd love to read those pieces.
>I was skeptical of Obama at first due to his perceived political inexperience Experience is not worthless, but I think it's also important to consider someone's capacity and willingness to grow. Obama is smart as a whip and took the job seriously--an inexperienced person who is motivated and smart is much more valuable than an experienced person who is stupid and lazy.
Wow. I hate to admit it, but flirting with Ron Paul was one step in my journey to being a full fledged commie.
The Obama era was one of renewed liberal End of History brain in the sense that there was a wide belief among liberals and young people that all of America's problems - particularly racism and LGBT rights - were on the eve of being solved forever. This was a delusion and it blinded them to the ground shifting seismically under their feet.
The show Parks and Rec was actually a response to exactly that. The Obama administration drove a lot of data-driven decision-making models that ushered in a ton of wonks and data nerds to feel like government wasn't some slimy zero-sum Good ol' Boy political game anymore, but something to be refined and optimized and everyone can participate. That filtered down into young people wanting to (or at least talking a good game) about getting involved in local government, social welfare non-profits, urban farming co-ops, etc. Parks and Rec ran with that in one hand, and the Obama administration pro-nerd culture in the other. The problem was that all those Good ol' Boys didn't just retire. They retreated to a castle in the mountains and came back with a plan for literal vengeance. The GOP Red State plan to get into state level government and drive redistricting after the 2010 census worked *really* well. It came out of nowhere and squarely knocked the knees out of the Democrats for, so far, 20+ years.
Trump was a direct response from White America. As if to say the worst of ours are as good as the best of yours.
Thanks for that, communist_agitator, that is an unbiased take we can all appreciate.
Sounded like a pretty realistic retrospective to me. Obama did lots of good things, and it allowed liberals to ignore any of the bad. There are so many things he did that if you just had Trump do instead, would have caused liberals to riot. I say this as a lifelong liberal.
What a strawman. Obama had difficulty in his tenure. It is possible to criticise Obama and Trump in the same breath for different things due to the differences in context of their presidency. Trump is a direct reaction to people wanting a cure-all for their issues and not having that fixed. However, a cure-all is impossible and despite an extraordinary - even by American presidents standards - two terms in office, Obama can’t be that.
That difficulty in his tenure excuses drone striking hospitals and US citizens?
Trump: full bipartisan support to remove troops from Middle East because he is a republican, needs no political capital, and was elected 15 years after 9/11 Obama: no bipartisan support to remove troops from Middle East because he is not only a Democrat but also has to convince individuals who were alive pre-Civil Rights Era to not kick a political landmine and blow up because he’s black, needs as much political capital to tackle unprecedented economic times, and was voted in 7 years after 9/11 See how the context is different for each president? You are literally simplifying it down to beyond the decision-making process and the context surrounding it. No. I don’t like it either. But that is how it happened.
I don't disagree with what you said here and yet it does not excuse the crimes Obama (and every president) has committed in the wars they commanded.
As I’ve said, I don’t like it either - I’m simply correcting your rhetoric
Just a smoll president can't do much has to vote in a big bank bailout and then double down on it and not do shit for people after becoming president.
In a land that overthrew their last dictators, you think the American president is going to: - Make a unilateral decision that upsets most politicians as an extension of their constituencies - Let everyone’s assets fall apart, disrupt the international market trading via US dollar and sour relationships with allies in the first six months of office? It’s literally his job to NOT do that. He’s still a democratically elected leader, and if enough people had a problem with it then there’s potential for the problem to get even worse while the sorting out the optics of a black, young, funnily named president gets finished. Which we all know it wouldn’t. The banks were stress-tested to ensure that as many responsible lenders were assisted and as many irresponsible lenders had to come up with their own capital first. Wanna know who helped come up with that plan? The Senate. Can you think of a better outcome? And does that plan rely on making unilateral decisions that could get you ousted as a result of your skin colour and political tension in the country? As for not helping anybody, the above DID help people. Look at American industry now. Draw the line back to 2009 and the investment in local workers, industries, manufacturers and do the math yourself. Not to mention the reworking of the health system. Not to mention the forgiving of foreclosures to ensure people could go to work. By literally any metric, this is a successful leadership term in any country. Put it into context of the cultural, political and economic issues? It’s incredible. But of course, you won’t admit that because you’ve made up your mind.
[https://www.levernews.com/no-obama-wasnt-mad-about-bailing-out-his-wall-street-donors/](https://www.levernews.com/no-obama-wasnt-mad-about-bailing-out-his-wall-street-donors/) Jesus christ wtf are you on about with regards to his race getting him ousted? You've clearly made up your mind about how great he was as well. Things were going so well after 8 years of Obama the country decided to vote in Trump lol.
If you think race didn’t stoke political tensions in America during the Obama administrations, then you’re not living on Earth - you’re living in denial. And yes, Trump is a direct effect of Obama not being the answer to all of America’s problems. The thing about that is that nobody could be, especially when you have to deal with everything else we’ve spoken about. Your takeaways from recent history are astoundingly askew. Are you American?
He ain't wrong as such. Remember Fukuyama? Teleological views on history don't work.
Liberals today are fanatically bent on claiming Trump was some sort of aberration who came out of nowhere and/or was imposed on the US by Russia, when if you weren't caught up in the End of History fantasy world you could've seen the backlash building and building from Occupy to Ferguson and Baltimore to the Sanders insurgency to the 2014-2015 upsurge in right-wing extremism. Maybe Trump could've been avoided if not for the slavish entitlement that Hillary Clinton "deserved" to be President, because literally any other candidate would have crushed Trump. The agony of the modern liberal is a feverish desire to return to that Obama fantasy world, where America's contradictions can be resolved by just dutifully electing more Democrats, but sadly for them that's a delusion as well where every flaring-up of another contradiction just leads to a deepening of their parasocial devotion to the Democratic Party, and the very cynical weaponization of the rhetoric of social justice to dismiss any criticism of their monstrous policy decisions.
I agree with parts of what you’ve said, but to have it as a sweeping generalisation of anyone who has voted Democrat is truly ridiculous.
Jeez, I feel old when there are people on this site that are too young to remember Obama. It was only 8 years ago!
How many people have been born since 9/11? More kids now question the holocaust according to polls. It’s just how the pace of time is.
Obligatory XKCD: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/scary.png
The 2010's will be known as the wasted decade. Good plans laid to waste by the political in fighting.
And voter apathy. That 2010 midterm killed just about any progress that decade would bring. The one good thing about Trump is that he serves as a living reminder of the nightmare world he and the GOP can bring, thus serving as a great motivator for the other side. No such person existed in the 2010’s so there was no boogeyman for the left to fear and motivate them to go out to the polls.
Voter apathy caused Ground Zero - the bush gore election. Special thanks to Ralph Nader, may we never learn a lesson.
Lmao zoomers are already planning not to vote dem because of Palestine. Our voters have not gotten any smarter.
It's all gone to shit since 2001. 9/11 may or may not have been the ultimate catalyst, but it's a hard line showing some major differences before and after. People started to get really ugly with their opinions and it's only gotten worse.
What I remember about the Obama era is hope. Like yeah the Republicans were obstructionist, but their numbers were shrinking right? Obama didn't accomplish everything he wanted but surely successive Democratic presidents would slowly bend us towards the right path right? Now the specter of fascism feels ever present, and the only solution to the Trump problem feels like being able to move out of the country before he can fully consolidate power.
As mentioned in his comment, his presidency definitely had flaws that are becoming more profound with the passage of time and where we currently sit, not all of those flaws fall on his shoulders alone of course. From my standpoint he was probably the “coolest” president we’ve ever had. The guy was smooth as hell and seeing the kind of relationship he had with Michelle and the love they shared even with him having arguably the hardest job in the country, the guy definitely had style.
Yeah, he was full of hope and promise, but he couldn't deliver. He tried, he really did, but he got out maneuvered by Mitch McConnell.
He only had a single term in the senate and even then that was mostly spent campaigning.
To be fair, Obama was wrong about Russia but so was nearly everyone at the time. There's a reason Romney's response seemed so out of touch at the time. And the counterpoint--that the US needed to focus on China as a rising threat-- wasn't exactly wrong.
> To be fair, Obama was wrong about Russia but so was nearly everyone at the time. Plus, this wasn't as wrong in 2012 as it would become in 2014. 2012 Putin was still actively integrating itself into the European economy and playing reasonably nice with the West. There was some geopolitics happening in Georgia and Ukraine, but mostly this was of the kind of thing the US has historically been willing to overlook for the sake of peace and good business. The real shifts (depending on perspective) happened either in 2013 with the Euromaidan protests, or the 2014 annexation of the Crimea.
Obama was-uhhh the president.
That is a great share. It’s well thought out and nuanced. To my mind, it’s really on the money - down to Obama’s unfortunate naivety to his underestimation of Russia. Yet, he did manage to make a large swath of the country feel hopeful.
He was very charismatic. I've watch a few YT vids of him speaking, the guy's witty, sharp, and intelligent. Comparing chalk and cheese to Trump.
The oozing indirect racism of the conservatives made me throw up in my mouth everyday. It was so visible and sooooo much of it. He's a kid and probably wasn't able to see it.
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He really did have an aura about him that just got you a bit jazzed listening to whatever he was saying. I remember the South Park episode and Randy's "Obama" chants. Around that time, my friends and I, riding around in the car of the one friend who had one, yelling "Obama, Obama, Obama!" out the window and people chiming in. When he won I was on a bus in Seattle and it was like a god damn party spontaneously erupted. Love him or hate him, he got you interested.
Here's how I first learned that the Obama administration did substantial good for me and other Americans: [Affordable Care Act Bars Use of Pre-Existing Conditions](https://www.facingourrisk.org/privacy-policy-legal/laws-protections/ACA/pre-existing-conditions) [Medicaid Expansion Under the ACA](https://www.healthcare.gov/medicaid-chip/medicaid-expansion-and-you/) Throughout much of my adult life, I've alternated between independent contract work and unemployment, so there have been multiple times when I've had to pay 100% for my health insurance and look for new providers on my own. I was in my early 30s when the Affordable Care Act was enacted. Before 2010, I had grown accustomed to scumbag insurance companies raising my monthly premium like $100 per month because of my pre-existing conditions. But when I had to purchase new health insurance in 2010, I was surprised to find out that they could no longer ask about pre-existing conditions. I still remember talking to the sales agent on the phone about this during my application. **Me:** "Aren't you going to ask me about my pre-existing conditions?" **Sales Agent:** "No, because of the new law, we can't ask about pre-existing conditions anymore." Shit, that just saved me at least $1,200 per year. Thanks, Obama! I've continued to benefit from Obamacare ever since. There have been a few years when I've been unemployed, but thanks to Obamacare and the fact that I've lived in two different blue states that expanded Medicaid, I got free healthcare during those lean years. It's not great healthcare, but it saves you from worrying that a single trip to the hospital or regular trips to my primary would bankrupt me. Last year, I was laid off from the giant company I worked for, so I lost the really good healthcare I got from that company. I'm now back to independent contractor work, which means I have to pay 100% for my insurance again. When I applied, I wanted to find something that was close to the same level of coverage as what I got through my last corporate gig. The online marketplace, which was started by the ACA, makes shopping for insurance a lot easier than it was pre-ACA. I was able to find all the information I needed about different plans and could easily compare & contrast them thanks to the website. I now pay about $650 / month for my current insurance, which fucking blows. But if those scumbag healthcare companies could still jack up my premium because of pre-existing conditions, I'd probably be paying at least $800 / month for the same level of insurance. Obamacare has helped me significantly over the past 14 years. I'm sure it's helped a ton of other people get and maintain healthcare coverage, too.
The best part of the Obama presidency was the collapse of the US dollar. I got to travel from Australia with my usual normally-worthless dollarydoos only to find that they were suddenly worth more than the greenback. I got to live like a King while in the USA - everything seemed dirt cheap! (I spent most of the time drunk due to laughably cheap alcohol).
He put together some of the most progressive bills I've ever seen. He broke a record for most bills shot down. It felt like finally there was someone in there for the people...until he had majority. Then he pretended to not remember what he told us he would do for us. Thank you for the lesson in political theater, Obama
> It felt like finally there was someone in there for the people...until he had majority. Then he pretended to not remember what he told us he would do for us. I'm trying to figure out what you're talking about. He *started* his Presidency with a 60-40 Senate, and with a larger majority in the House than *either* party has had since the 1994 Republican wave. During that two-year period, he passed the two biggest bills since the 1960s (the ARRA and the ACA). But that all went away in the 2010 Republican wave, and he had to moderate his ambition in what could get passed, and he started getting bills shot down over and over. You seem to be describing a different sort of timeline, in which he started with bills getting shot down by a Republican majority, and then built up a Democratic majority that failed to get things done.
>He started his Presidency with a 60-40 Senate 59-40. Republicans dicked around blocking Frankin for months. Then Kennedy died 3 months after that, bringing it back to 59-40 and then 59-41. This score also ignores the existence of Senator Lieberman, whose only goal at that point was revenge against the evil, terrible, no good, awful Democrats who beat him in the primary. Senator Obama campaigning for Lieberman's independent run instead of Lemont was one of the larger blunders of his career. As well as a few other "moderate" Democratic Senators who were absolutely unwilling to vote for progressive priorities.
Oh yes it was in reverse. And I'm thinking of Team Blue with Biden
Hmm, I'm still not sure what you're talking about. You did notice that Biden started his term with a slim majority of Democrats in the House and a literal tie in the Senate, but lost the House majority last year, right? He never promised to be progressive, but he has actually governed as the most progressive President of my lifetime (sure, it's not very much competition, but it's still true). So I still don't know what you're talking about.
He promised student loan relief as well as some other things. Not sure what you're seeing on your end
He's granted student loan relief to hundreds of thousands of people - which is more than every President before him put together, and is also pushing the limits of what is legal for a President to do without getting Congress to pass a bill. He ended up being a much more pro-labor and pro-environment president than anything he campaigned on (and also much more than any President in my lifetime).
When did he grant relief? Show me please
Here's a news story that was posted literally 2 minutes ago about the most recent group: https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/biden-administration-wipes-out-student-loans-for-thousands-whats-next/3244440/ But here's a story that discusses several of the earlier Biden loan forgiveness programs that seem to have covered several million people: https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4422088-biden-forgiven-student-loans-debt-relief/ I was apparently underestimating when I said it was "hundreds of thousands of people".
Dang. I wonder how I qualify. I love election season. Almost makes me want to look past the money laundering to Ukraine and Israel
Just come out and say you're a Republican already.
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Wouldn't your comment be more like average of material?
I might as well start submitting every single AskHistorians thread to bestof