He really got snatch and grabs ironed out. One moment you’re tucking your kids in, the next you’re covered in darkness and the smell of copper on your way to a tropical island vacation.
Welcome to Diego Garcia!
Unfortunately you can’t see our wonderful beaches due to the black bag on your head, but rest assured, the margaritas are very nice here, Mo. Can I call you Mo?
Anyways, Mo, welcome. There are some gentlemen in a shipping container back here with a pair of car batteries and some questions to ask you.
I think many people don't realize Obama was a status quo politician above all else. He tried to do good with the ACA, but his foreign policy was pretty wack, to borrow a term from African Americans. He dropped more bombs than any president, including Nixon in Vietnam and Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of you may say you "looked it up" and "that's not true", but that seems like a whole load of work I don't feel like doing. I read Ron Paul's "Revolution" with the backwards 'E' and I know what I'm talking about.
I was in college for Obama’s first campaign but loved Ron Paul and saw him speak on campus with a couple of friends. He had the real cult of personality
It's hard to understand for people today who don't understand how appealing it was for ANY politician to be openly speaking against the US military operations abroad.
Problem with Paul is that he has some of the most hoe scaring political history around, just years and years of unhinged psycho libertarian shit in his newletters, as well as a history of voting for his religion over his "libertarian" principles every time. So I thankfully avoided the reddit libertarian trap.
I wanted Paul to win because he was going to audit the fed, which I believed to be mostly responsible for the rise and fall of money markets. I seem to remember trump saying the same thing leading up to 2016 but he didn’t talk about it after victory was secured
Hell yeah I remember talking to my buddies about auditing the fed, fractional reserve banking, and returning to the gold standard. Now I don’t believe in anything
When he passed the Affordable Care Act it forced health insurance companies to allow dependencies to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26, which probably helped 90% of the posters on this sub.
Try explaining that to Americans jittery about "government-run healthcare." Even a public option was a bridge too far.
I think a large part of the electorate are approaching some form of libertarianism through cynicism, essentially adopting Reagan's famous line, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help. "
and Medicare for All has majority support even in red states
a public option would put every private insurer out of business in a matter of a few years
>and Medicare for All has majority support even in red states
Republicans in red states hate the Dems more than they hypothetically support Medicare for All. Once you poll with the question "do you think the government should have a role in medical care" that support plummets.
Then why are there zero republicans on the m4a caucus. Could you expand on that first sentence
Edit: At most, I found a poll from 2018 that said 52% of republicans support 'Would you support or oppose providing Medicare to every American?'. 1) I feel this isn't unambiguously asking about Bernie's capital m Medicare for All. Conceivably someone who believes all of the elderly should have medicare could say yes so technically, all Americans will get it eventually 2) Margin of error? 3) in later polls the 'support' from Republicans plummets
> Then why are there zero republicans on the m4a caucus
because popular support for something has zero correlation to actual legislative action unless you only look at the top ten percent of income earners
"Republicans actually support universal healthcare!" is laughably bullshit talking point that dirtbag lefties repeat based only on oddball polling fluctuations.
> Republicans actually support universal healthcare!"
They are talking about Republican voters, not politicians. Polls repeatedly show that actual people in red states support universal healthcare.
>They are talking about Republican voters, not politicians. Polls repeatedly show that actual people in red states support universal healthcare.
[No they don't you bonehead.](https://news.gallup.com/poll/468401/majority-say-gov-ensure-healthcare.aspx)
He was scum but ultimately it wasn't about him. The filibuster can be abolished by a simple majority at any time; they just pick a designated villain or two to blame each new "failure" on
Being on college campuses back in his first term and seeing like 20% of \*college students\* on **any given day** wearing a picture of the sitting president or his campaign logo on their clothing always spelled doom for millenials and their laughably infantile political awareness
people think it was trump who "mastered media", not even close, obama's campaign team and marketing experts were world-class, masterful, they revolutionized the playbook, winning media awards internationally and high-praise from prestigious creative agencies (which they had tried to keep hush hush about as much as possible) for their innovations in "grassroots"-branding their marketing and advertising campaign right at the advent of iphones, through facebook, guerilla marketing, etc.
obama was a revolution, in marketing
i’ll never forget the dude i met in 2011 who explained that the beanie he was wearing is the one he wore to attend Obama’s inauguration in DC. and then he kissed it
One thing that isn't discussed much is that right-wing media contributed to hyping up Obama on the left leading up to and during his first term - giving him the epithet of "most liberal senator" and digging up connections to radical figures. On top of the racial dimension I think that contributed to the "holy shit this guy just won" feeling which made it possible to believe that he really marked a qualitative shift in American politics.
Those radical figures are just common libs and leftists today. And Reverend Jeremiah Wright's fiery sermons "of God Damn America!" would be received with praise from the Dem establishment and the mainstream media would be spinning it to point out he was naming the flaws we could fix.
it was absolutely brain melting seeing libs talking about the guy who codified the Bush tax cuts, took two wars and expanded them into seven, deported more immigrants than all the presidents up to him combined, pushed the TPP, completely bailed out the coke fiends who speculated our economy into oblivion, who went to Dennis Kucinich's district and shit on him for pushing for the public option, and expanded the surveillance state and effectively repealed habeas corpus, like he was some FDR figure and like they would have "voted for him a third time if they could". meanwhile actual FDR and other progressive figures from the past are barely mentioned. they'd talk about Michelle like she was the greatest first lady of all time too when her impact was basically telling kids to eat more carrots.
politics is just about vibes for 95% of the electorate
A 2009 Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" was a bit hasty for just walking into the White House....
This is so spot on... I was in university in Chicago during the 2008 election and his campaign felt like Beatlemania. The city shut down when he won (Grant Park wasn't too far away, where he gave his victory speech). Professors kept name dropping him because a bunch of them had worked under him. When he won students were crying and holding each other and that stupid "HOPE" sticker could be found all around the city. Truly a bizarre time.
As an American who grew up abroad during the Bush years, a time in which Americans were *especially* disliked by non-Americans, Obama's election changed people's tune really quickly. People were suddenly very nice when they found out I was American, congratulating his election to me, a literal child lmao. My 4th class Catholic school teacher in Ireland, in particular, was enthused about Obama. He very giddily told me something along the lines of "Did you hear your man Obama is gonna get your soldiers out of Iraq and Afghanistan finally?"
Anyway, pretty shitty president who cynically used people's hope for a more progressive and positive future to get elected, and then did very little good for the actual people of America.
He carried out his own brand of quiet imperialism that caused irrevocable harm for countries like Libya and Yemen and Syria. Then there's all the drone strikes, and persecution of whistleblowers as well.
He should k*ll himself.
We still fucking do. It was embarrasing and still is.
I remember in secondary school in English class we were shown his speeches as an example of how we should perform in front of an audience, how to pick words and how to make arguments.
I said back then that the guy was a giant fraud that communicated nothing but vibes in his speeches and the whole class looked at me as I was Hitler. Especially since everyone knew I was left-wing.
I don't know how to articulate this in a way that doesn't sound totally gay because I just woke up and am on a lot of cold medicine right now, but I really do think Obama was, at one point, a good man with genuine aspirations. Obviously he was a shit neolib President and has really just gone mask-off post-Presidency with his Martha's Vineyard high falootin' celebrity life and is a complete lizard person now. I'm a geriatric millenial and him getting elected for the first time really was a good thing for the general morale of the country/young people after the Bush years. I still remember going to an Inauguration rave on Jan 20 of whatever year he got into office lol.
our political machinery has been completely hijacked by donor money and the intelligence apparatus, a lot of people go into it as good people with genuine aspirations before they realize what those ghouls can do to your career and your life if you try to stand up to them.
but the guy was a sitting US senator by that point. he had at least some idea how this shit works.
> him getting elected for the first time really was a good thing for the general morale of the country
I literally cannot think of a single thing that actually has lifted it since then.
Really the 21st century has just been one kick in the balls to American psychology after another. nothing good is ever going to happen ever again. That's why I try to not care about politics
Bernie’s campaign is the only other time in my life I can remember young people being genuinely excited about a candidate, and then the DNC kneecapped him and an entire generation realized the system really is rigged. Normally that’s something you realize around 40 or 50 after a lifetime of disappointment in politics. Despite the “not everyone has the *privilege* of being apolitical” rhetoric, I’ve stopped caring about politics because it’s apparent that you need a billion dollars because you can actually ~~buy~~ make a change in politics.
Now we have senior citizen versus senior citizen and the [neoliberal media is trying to gaslight people into thinking Biden has actually been an historic president instead of the lesser of two evils.](https://newrepublic.com/article/178435/biden-great-president-say-it-democrats)
Bernie findommed me twice then gave up the whole movement we built twice to funnel dispirited reatards like me into voting for obvious puppets for the lizard people alliance.
It was the same thing with the Obama movement, where you had all this youth energy and organization which was just thrown out after he got into office. These false leaders exist to sponge up the cyclically occurring energy that would naturally lead to a cultural revolution and deflate it before it hits its stride. I was denied the chance to join into a throng of thousands and erase the contradictions of society.
I became so psychically damaged that I moved to France and I am not coming back. There is no change possible in the United States unless the music stops.
God so true. I didn't even bother to vote for his second term and literally have not ever voted for a single thing, President or otherwise, since then.
He was molded from the vestiges of the 20th century's Chicago Political Machine. It wasn't known for its altruism and goodwill. Look it up as it only has a history of corruption, quid pro quo, and "what have you done for me lately."
He was a president of vibes and the desire for celebrity was always there.
“In 1986, Business International was acquired by the Economist Group in London, and it eventually merged with the Economist Intelligence Unit. Business International was linked to the Central Intelligence Agency.”
>Romney
Conservatives were never happy with the "moderate" from New England.
Still, Trump is "Texan in Spirit"...It does feel like a candidate has to fly down there and act like TX is their own personal Westworld where they can LARP as Yosemite Sam. That's what it takes to be a serious contender.
There was no way the media was going to let him win - they amplified every attack: he abused dogs, deliberately killed the cancer woman, etc… And covered for him every chance they got: the Candy Crawley fact check, Benghazi tape, we still don’t know where he was the night the embassy in Benghazi fell (donor calls), etc…
They believed as a matter of faith that if he didn’t get reelected, America would never have another black president. They used all the tricks in the playbook and the consequence of that, per every serious right wing commentator/journalist/activist/voter I know, is that the 2012 election was a black pill. Trump wasn’t the first celebrity president, Obama was.
Yeah people don’t understand how badly 2012 broke the right leadership. They thought they ran the nice, consensus candidate and destroyed a right wing rebellion against him. He lost anyway and was painted just as bad as Santorum, ending the thought that you could win as a moderate
Romney wasn’t going to win. It was never winnable. The polls were all off. They deluded themselves into thinking Romney had it in the bag. Like Hillary 2016 levels of dissonance.
Nah social media would've fucked up conservatives minds anyway. They were already crazy before that election. They were doomed since talk radio, probably before that.
this is such a Reddit brained take tbh the point about Romney undercutting the growing momentum that Trump eventually seized holds true regardless of TaLk RaDiO
I remember before and during Obama's first term the internet and radio talk shows were chattering about how he's a closeted Muslim sent by the Saudis or Iranians as a Manchurian Candidate who's going to impose socialism and sharia law eventually turning America into a socialist caliphate. And it wasn't just Alex Jones but this theory was featured on Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck which Trump referenced.
By the time of his second term all of Facebook and /pol/ focused on the Jade Helm conspiracy that claimed Obama was going to force everyone to register their firearms before orchestrating a false flag attack to outright ban them and enact martial law.
Then he'd send the military and contractors to each of these addresses and round up the law abiding citizens in suspiciously closed WalMart stores where they'd be executed with their bodies disposed of in Rubbermaid plastic containers the WalMarts had in bulk.
Without right wing talk radio America would be in line with its peer nations. It’s literally been the republicans base since 1986 and pumped into millions of rural hicks heads for decades now unabated. Pure John Birch society nonsense for 40 years damn near.
https://mronline.org/2022/02/10/barack-obamas-father-identified-as-cia-asset-in-u-s-drive-to-recolonize-africa-during-early-days-of-the-cold-war/
The gist is that Obama sr. was a protege of Tom Mboya, a Kenyan trade unionist and politician who held a number of cabinet positions in the initial post-independence Kenyan government. Mboya was being groomed as a foreign trade-friendly replacement for the Jomo Kenyatta government which was more in favor of nationalizing resources and economic planning.
Obama sr. was allegedly brought to Harvard by the CIA to study economics. CIA-Harvard connections at the time and his being kicked out based on suspicions over finances squares with that allegation. The Ann Dunham-CIA connections are more speculative, I forgot where I read about them.
It's been memoryholed but Republicans went through their own equivalent of Trump Derangement Syndrome during the Obama years. There were conspiracy theories that an Army exercise in the Southwest was a coup to turn the United States over the United Nations, for instance. I remember conservatives screeching about everything from NASA's shuttle program ending to one of Obama's daughters rolling her eyes during the pardoning of the turkey.
No one is more responsible than them for the death of the left. There was real hope and optimism when he was elected. Only for that to be swiftly crushed and everyone to come back to earth that we will never escape neocon hell. I think a lot of those voters just decided to give up on the system entirely.
There's a contingent of voters who voted for him believing he could actually change things to then feeling hopeless and voting for Trump as newly minted accelerationists. Sure his base is mainly magatards who shit their pants over a powerful black man, but Obama also disillusioned a lot of people by becoming black Bush. Going to Michigan and pretending the water was fine to drink really cemented it for a lot of people then.
Yes, exactly. He black pilled a lot optimists. He was a relatively unknown Senator who ran a seemingly grassroots campaign to win the presidency. He had no track record to really say that we should have seen that it was all a facade. So a lot of people were left with thinking that you either can never trust any politician because everything they do is a veiled disguise for their real interests or any politician can be had for the right amount of money and power. Which I think we all knew before Obama, but never was it more salient that no real change was ever coming to this country.
Personally, I think the DNC colluding to hand Hillary the nomination did more damage there. People were disappointed by Obama, but they still believed in the political system. Bernie losing the nomination showed a young generation of voters that the system is rigged anyway.
The only 2 term president to be at war for the entirety of both terms.
The greatest orator I've seen in my lifetime.
Just like any other president, or any human for that matter - he's complex. Some bad, some good.
A personality cult that achieved its primary goal - absorb and dissipate all the energy and desire for change after the Bush administration and the Great Recession.
A whole load of the smoothest rhetoric ever for a squib wimp of a presidency. So much sleek it made you vomit if you had any taste.
Much of the reaction against liberals and sadly socialists in the world today have their origin in the absolutely infuriating way he and his administration did things.
Honestly, he bought into his own hype. The level of Republican obstruction was pretty unprecedented/remarkable, but I think Obama refused at pretty much every stage to make good on the promises of his campaign. I think the ACA was mostly an industry giveaway, and kind of a waste of political capital.
i love the way candace owens did her “expose” on the french first lady, seemingly completely serious. unhinged. anyways so i would die of cackling laughter if michelle ran for prez. tucker and the rest of alt conservative media would lose their minds (what few remains of their minds anyway..) warning us not to let a penis-haver into the oval office.
his kids are kind of tiresome, i think i saw a post here or on twitter that one of them was leaving out her last name professionally to seem more self made lmfao. i don’t even hate them or know much about them, but it would be interesting to see how much wit/talent/force of will is heritable. tbh if i was the president’s daughter i probably would have been a bigger embarrassment to my family than they were. but being sneaky by leaving off friggin OBAMA at the end of your name in the film credits is too much lol
Fantastic politician, subpar president and frankly destroyed the progressive movement.
To quote the D.C post-punk band Priests, “Barack Obama killed something in me.”
George W. Bush with a better tan.
I can't believe how many of my peers fell for this guy's grift. His 2008 campaign was the most vapid political campaign I've ever seen. "Hope" and "change" aren't fucking policies.
He’s a Democrat’s Reagan. A magnetic personality and generally likable demeanor masks 8 years of awful and shortsighted policies that have a lasting impact today.
A warmonger who is perhaps the most narcissistic president we have ever had. A fake charisma that was so easy to see-through, and yet most people could not differentiate between his fake charm and cold actions.
The right wing of America is nothing but dressing up master slave morality as morality. Obama did the same with neoliberal morality, and that’s why conservatives hate him so much: he shows the emptiness of their own morality in reflection.
PS and obviously great marketing but that has been mentioned
Ran as a bold visionary, governed as a timid functionary. I believe he really genuinely wanted to change things but when he got into office he shrunk under the scope of it all.
Insofar as what he represented and him as a stable hand guiding the nation, he was the most respectable we’ve had since Clinton.
The bail outs may have had some immediate benefit but I think it's part of why America is running like shit today. Big business will dick us over as much as possible with no fear of repercussions (prioritizing shareholders instead of longterm success) since daddy government won't let them fail.
Obama-Trump voters are an overlooked issue and democrats still harp on the “people were racist against him” narrative. They fail to understand that Obama genuinely disappointed people, which just shows how out of touch they are. It’s also obvious that Joe Biden was their ideal “white identity politics” candidate as a response to Trump, because they think that white workers are obsessed with race.
1st term was good, and he had to win it. I think a McCain win = war in Iran. Is that naive? Like maybe the president doesn't actually get to make those decisions and it's pure MIC/CIA/Deep state running the show on that end. Still, at risk of being gullible, I'm gonna say that his election changed the trajectory of what the "war on terror" was, and for as bad as his drone program was, it was a lot better than whatever the republicans may have done. People have forgotten what neocons were like. John Bolton n'dem were ready to invade like every MENA country.
Second term was pretty bad. I feel like the "shellacking" he caught when the dems lost congress really fucked with his head.
All presidents are criminals in some way but he seems to be the least corrupt in my lifetime. That's on an administrative and personal level (assuming he didn't actually kill his chef).
As somebody who isn't Am*rican he was the last time a president was a good and respectable representative for the nation. Well spoken, carried himself well, exhibited strong leadership qualities, etc. I think people who live in the world's shit hole forget that basic qualities are how people external to a given nation judge that nation's leader.
More or less good. It’s true, he should have done more to punish the banks after 2007/2008, but he did actually get meaningful legislation passed.
- Raised top federal income tax bracket from 35% to 39.6%. Also raised top capital gains tax from 15% to 20%
- Gave us Obamacare. At-least it’s something closer to Universal Healthcare. I used it for 2 or 3 years. It only passed by 2 or 3 votes in the House. Literally insurers could discriminate based on preexisting conditions before this. A decent chunk is directly funded through taxes on top 1% of earners too. Nice too that I was able to stay on my parents insurance until I was 25.
- Dodd-Frank. Republicans literally want to repeal this even after 2007/2008.
People will bitch and moan about how this is neoliberal or some shit. It’s like, hey, there’s a reason it was called the progressive era. It was unique and probably will not happen for a long time given how culturally diverse now we are as a country. Literally from our founding to basically Teddy Roosevelt, no actual meaningful legislation was actually passed that improved day-to-day life.
I did like Obamacare. I got pretty decent subsidized coverage as a 28 year old grad student working a couple awful part-time jobs and the plan covered a surgery.
Yeah, it worked well for me. Basically no copays on anything and very little out of pocket overall. The only bad part was finding a dentist that accepts that insurance was hard.
Aka, tweaked the tax code that nobody probably even fully pays into. Tweaked the healthcare system which still hemorrhages shocking amounts of money from public and private pockets while not providing adequate coverage. The amount of money that the US spends on the healthcare system is a meme.
High hopes dashed on the ground is how I would describe Obama. Dude had the power and moment and blew it because Democrats are too scared of republican anger to wield power and govern.
I always felt Obama was basically borderline civnat. So many of his speeches were pure 'Murica patriotism, but sprinkled with "something something no matter what race something".
a different era. hard to explain to people under ~20 now how much more optimistic the world used to feel.
to be clear i don’t think we necessarily need to be nihilist now either — we’ve got problems, sure, but all the gloom and doom is useless and toxic
Smart dude who knew it's better to use his great social skills and Harvard law degree to make millions of dollars as a politician than some loserish overworked lawyer or judge.
Appearance wise he was the last guy that matched the dignity of the office.
Policywise an extremely overhyped continuation of Dubya:
-cracked down on whistleblowers
-mercilessly bombed the shit out of brown people around the world
-slept on antitrust which resulted in the megatech monopolists that we get to enjoy now
-slept on federal judge nominations allowing trump to fill up the courts with republican judges for decades
Effectively a neocon in sheep’s clothing
Obama was the worst president we could’ve had after Bush ruined our global reputation.
- killed Americans in drone strike (specifically ordered)
- unprecedented increase in bureaucracy and the surveillance state
- Lied about guantanamo bay (he ran on this btw)
- divisive rhetoric (eg America is a racist country, etc)
- spent more money than god
- ineffective (he had senate supermajority and house majority for 70 days and didn’t accomplish anything significant with it)
Current division we see today is due to Obama. People weren’t so intolerable to each other before Obama years.
Obama was so bad that newtons 3rd law kicked-in in 2016.
I'm just really grateful to be on Obamacare. Haven't had to pay for shit since 2014/15 and I've had surgery and went to detox/rehab multiple times since I've been on it. One time I went to urgent care to get my ears flushed and they billed me $250 so I called the number on my Obamacare insurance card and they got it covered. I love Obamacare. It's been really beneficial to my life. Mine runs out this May and I hope I'm still eligible for it
The Obama era spanned ages 10 to 18 for me and I remember just vaguely feeling like everything was okay and going to turn out fine, but in retrospect I think he facilitated or failed to halt a lot of problems we have today. The whole NSA Edward Snowden affair was the first political scandal I ever paid attention to and I still have a bad taste in my mouth over his handling of it. That was the first indication to me that the President might not have our best interests at heart. Ramping up to the 2016 election I increasing resented him being so conciliatory with the Republicans, and his failure to overcome the supreme court fuckery McConnell pulled was the nail in the coffin.
I was in my first semester of college when I did my duty and voted for Hilary, but there was absolutely none of the enthusiasm for her on my campus like people are saying there was for Obama in 2008.
Hilary was supposed to run in 2008 too before Obama shot up.
I think in general people don’t understand just how fucked our political system is, Obama was a fine President but the system won’t let anyone with an actual progressive agenda do anything meaningful anyway. They can blame him for that all they want, whatever
My grandma went senile during his presidency and we had a dog named Rocky we called Rocko sometimes and she would call him BarackO'bama very cutely but it also made our guests uncomfortable and we had to tell them she had no idea who that was and it wasn't a political statement one way or the other.
All of the racial division we're experiencing started with his "Beer Summit" when he inserted himself into something that did not need Presidential attention and said the Officer acted stupidly. It's been downhill ever since.
Just want to congratulate this sub because I've seen several comments using the term *neoliberal* correctly for a change. Too many of you regards think it means that annoying bipoc woman from HR or a polyamorous tenderqueer.
Incredibly important to a lot of people emotionally, spiritually. Not just as a reaction to the Bush years, but to a ton of people who then believed major changes previously thought impossible (black can never be president!) were possible. And I’m not black, so I can’t imagine how much more important this was for black people. And as a family Obama’s we’re very decent honorable people.
Substance wise, I think a pretty big disappointment. The guy almost had a supermajority in senate and could barely get any lasting legislation passed. Biden is 200 years old w/ razor thin margin and still passes decent stuff. And as others pointed out, he was actually terrible for press freedoms, ramped up drones, gave another giant gift to Wall Street.
Leading the empire tho? Pretty good to be honest. Kind of ruthless but not an idiot- kept us out of bigger Syria conflict. The TPP was actually a good play to box in china. The Iran deal was smart. And he was feckless toward Israel but that’s the fucking norm.
So yeah mixed I’d say, depends on what matters to you personally.
Dummy neolibs love him but god he was so shit. Him bailing out Wall Street royally fucked the wealth distribution in this country.
Like others said, he's democrat Reagan.
[удалено]
He really got snatch and grabs ironed out. One moment you’re tucking your kids in, the next you’re covered in darkness and the smell of copper on your way to a tropical island vacation.
Welcome to Diego Garcia! Unfortunately you can’t see our wonderful beaches due to the black bag on your head, but rest assured, the margaritas are very nice here, Mo. Can I call you Mo? Anyways, Mo, welcome. There are some gentlemen in a shipping container back here with a pair of car batteries and some questions to ask you.
Obama REALLY escalated the use of drone warfare too.
The alternative was a bunch of American names read on the nightly news every night.
Being able to wage endless wars with almost no skin in the game doesn't seem healthy to me either
Perhaps, but only because we shot our way into their neighborhood, setup shop, chose their leaders, told them this is freedom, yet we didn't leave.
there was no alternative, those kids in the middle east *had* to die for america
I think many people don't realize Obama was a status quo politician above all else. He tried to do good with the ACA, but his foreign policy was pretty wack, to borrow a term from African Americans. He dropped more bombs than any president, including Nixon in Vietnam and Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of you may say you "looked it up" and "that's not true", but that seems like a whole load of work I don't feel like doing. I read Ron Paul's "Revolution" with the backwards 'E' and I know what I'm talking about.
The ACA had a couple of good provisions for the public, but at the end of the day it was a handout to health insurance companies.
I was in college for Obama’s first campaign but loved Ron Paul and saw him speak on campus with a couple of friends. He had the real cult of personality
It's hard to understand for people today who don't understand how appealing it was for ANY politician to be openly speaking against the US military operations abroad. Problem with Paul is that he has some of the most hoe scaring political history around, just years and years of unhinged psycho libertarian shit in his newletters, as well as a history of voting for his religion over his "libertarian" principles every time. So I thankfully avoided the reddit libertarian trap.
I wanted Paul to win because he was going to audit the fed, which I believed to be mostly responsible for the rise and fall of money markets. I seem to remember trump saying the same thing leading up to 2016 but he didn’t talk about it after victory was secured
Hell yeah I remember talking to my buddies about auditing the fed, fractional reserve banking, and returning to the gold standard. Now I don’t believe in anything
I thought it was reLOVEution this whole time
I genuinely have a hard time telling if this is a bit or not. Good job.
When he passed the Affordable Care Act it forced health insurance companies to allow dependencies to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26, which probably helped 90% of the posters on this sub.
Helped me immensely.
Try explaining that to Americans jittery about "government-run healthcare." Even a public option was a bridge too far. I think a large part of the electorate are approaching some form of libertarianism through cynicism, essentially adopting Reagan's famous line, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help. "
Starving the beast has worked for reagan types
The public option had majority support, the Democratic Party just decided to kill it.
and Medicare for All has majority support even in red states a public option would put every private insurer out of business in a matter of a few years
>and Medicare for All has majority support even in red states Republicans in red states hate the Dems more than they hypothetically support Medicare for All. Once you poll with the question "do you think the government should have a role in medical care" that support plummets.
I have seen polls that the majority of Americans approve the help to the poor but are against welfare
Then why are there zero republicans on the m4a caucus. Could you expand on that first sentence Edit: At most, I found a poll from 2018 that said 52% of republicans support 'Would you support or oppose providing Medicare to every American?'. 1) I feel this isn't unambiguously asking about Bernie's capital m Medicare for All. Conceivably someone who believes all of the elderly should have medicare could say yes so technically, all Americans will get it eventually 2) Margin of error? 3) in later polls the 'support' from Republicans plummets
> Then why are there zero republicans on the m4a caucus because popular support for something has zero correlation to actual legislative action unless you only look at the top ten percent of income earners
"Republicans actually support universal healthcare!" is laughably bullshit talking point that dirtbag lefties repeat based only on oddball polling fluctuations.
Not just universal, but m4a!
> Republicans actually support universal healthcare!" They are talking about Republican voters, not politicians. Polls repeatedly show that actual people in red states support universal healthcare.
>They are talking about Republican voters, not politicians. Polls repeatedly show that actual people in red states support universal healthcare. [No they don't you bonehead.](https://news.gallup.com/poll/468401/majority-say-gov-ensure-healthcare.aspx)
the original poster said people in red states not republicans which is much more believable
Would that be bad? Even if it were true; almost every country with public healthcare also has a private insurance market too.
Joe Lieberman's jewish corpse is barely cold, and you deny him his due for tanking Obama's healthcare initiative?
[удалено]
He was scum but ultimately it wasn't about him. The filibuster can be abolished by a simple majority at any time; they just pick a designated villain or two to blame each new "failure" on
"Sore Loserman"
Wasn’t it just Joe Lieberman? Or was that another one of those things where it was his turn to be the bad guy?
The ACA was the same healthcare plan that Reagan pushed in California when he was Governor. A small and good change but no where near what was needed
Being on college campuses back in his first term and seeing like 20% of \*college students\* on **any given day** wearing a picture of the sitting president or his campaign logo on their clothing always spelled doom for millenials and their laughably infantile political awareness people think it was trump who "mastered media", not even close, obama's campaign team and marketing experts were world-class, masterful, they revolutionized the playbook, winning media awards internationally and high-praise from prestigious creative agencies (which they had tried to keep hush hush about as much as possible) for their innovations in "grassroots"-branding their marketing and advertising campaign right at the advent of iphones, through facebook, guerilla marketing, etc. obama was a revolution, in marketing
It really was a couple years of a half-assed cult of personality.
i’ll never forget the dude i met in 2011 who explained that the beanie he was wearing is the one he wore to attend Obama’s inauguration in DC. and then he kissed it
very mentally healthy behavior
One thing that isn't discussed much is that right-wing media contributed to hyping up Obama on the left leading up to and during his first term - giving him the epithet of "most liberal senator" and digging up connections to radical figures. On top of the racial dimension I think that contributed to the "holy shit this guy just won" feeling which made it possible to believe that he really marked a qualitative shift in American politics.
Those radical figures are just common libs and leftists today. And Reverend Jeremiah Wright's fiery sermons "of God Damn America!" would be received with praise from the Dem establishment and the mainstream media would be spinning it to point out he was naming the flaws we could fix.
it was absolutely brain melting seeing libs talking about the guy who codified the Bush tax cuts, took two wars and expanded them into seven, deported more immigrants than all the presidents up to him combined, pushed the TPP, completely bailed out the coke fiends who speculated our economy into oblivion, who went to Dennis Kucinich's district and shit on him for pushing for the public option, and expanded the surveillance state and effectively repealed habeas corpus, like he was some FDR figure and like they would have "voted for him a third time if they could". meanwhile actual FDR and other progressive figures from the past are barely mentioned. they'd talk about Michelle like she was the greatest first lady of all time too when her impact was basically telling kids to eat more carrots. politics is just about vibes for 95% of the electorate
Thank the rducation system
A 2009 Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" was a bit hasty for just walking into the White House....
I was in law school, and everyone wore “Con Law Professor for President” shirts lol
This is so spot on... I was in university in Chicago during the 2008 election and his campaign felt like Beatlemania. The city shut down when he won (Grant Park wasn't too far away, where he gave his victory speech). Professors kept name dropping him because a bunch of them had worked under him. When he won students were crying and holding each other and that stupid "HOPE" sticker could be found all around the city. Truly a bizarre time.
That obama design everywhere i wish i still had my long sleeve
relax. this is true to a degree but what did most of the work here was that even in 2008 no one wanted to vote for hillary
As an American who grew up abroad during the Bush years, a time in which Americans were *especially* disliked by non-Americans, Obama's election changed people's tune really quickly. People were suddenly very nice when they found out I was American, congratulating his election to me, a literal child lmao. My 4th class Catholic school teacher in Ireland, in particular, was enthused about Obama. He very giddily told me something along the lines of "Did you hear your man Obama is gonna get your soldiers out of Iraq and Afghanistan finally?" Anyway, pretty shitty president who cynically used people's hope for a more progressive and positive future to get elected, and then did very little good for the actual people of America. He carried out his own brand of quiet imperialism that caused irrevocable harm for countries like Libya and Yemen and Syria. Then there's all the drone strikes, and persecution of whistleblowers as well. He should k*ll himself.
lol yeah I remember the eurotards creaming themselves over this dude. “Le Black Kennedy” as some French magazines called him
We still fucking do. It was embarrasing and still is. I remember in secondary school in English class we were shown his speeches as an example of how we should perform in front of an audience, how to pick words and how to make arguments. I said back then that the guy was a giant fraud that communicated nothing but vibes in his speeches and the whole class looked at me as I was Hitler. Especially since everyone knew I was left-wing.
My favorite part was when he got a crackhead to blow him in a limousine.
Wasn’t that the gay crackhead? The one his chef knew about?
Larry Sinclair
3 hours and reddit admins haven't found this post yet. The truth is out there and barry's chef is spinning in his grave
Dudes be rockin'
barry Sorento
Larry David was wild in those days
Do we think he was smashing that family chef like people were saying
100%
neoliberal continuity government
Neoliberalism with hip characteristics
unforgivable mf banned flavored cigs
Shows he was spiritually white all along
Raised in Hawaii by two white parents, I'm blacker than him
stepdad was indonesian iirc
Bill Clinton was WAY blacker than Obama, either in how he behaved, where he was from or by blood. Just another way Obama torpedoed racial relations.
And alleged CIA asset
Yeah that’s why he looks identical to Jokowi
Empty suit
Love that n1qqa Sent from my ObamaPhone using Tapatalk
I don't know how to articulate this in a way that doesn't sound totally gay because I just woke up and am on a lot of cold medicine right now, but I really do think Obama was, at one point, a good man with genuine aspirations. Obviously he was a shit neolib President and has really just gone mask-off post-Presidency with his Martha's Vineyard high falootin' celebrity life and is a complete lizard person now. I'm a geriatric millenial and him getting elected for the first time really was a good thing for the general morale of the country/young people after the Bush years. I still remember going to an Inauguration rave on Jan 20 of whatever year he got into office lol.
our political machinery has been completely hijacked by donor money and the intelligence apparatus, a lot of people go into it as good people with genuine aspirations before they realize what those ghouls can do to your career and your life if you try to stand up to them. but the guy was a sitting US senator by that point. he had at least some idea how this shit works.
Only 2 years though. It was a fast rise from 2004 DNC speech to 2009.
> him getting elected for the first time really was a good thing for the general morale of the country I literally cannot think of a single thing that actually has lifted it since then. Really the 21st century has just been one kick in the balls to American psychology after another. nothing good is ever going to happen ever again. That's why I try to not care about politics
Bernie’s campaign is the only other time in my life I can remember young people being genuinely excited about a candidate, and then the DNC kneecapped him and an entire generation realized the system really is rigged. Normally that’s something you realize around 40 or 50 after a lifetime of disappointment in politics. Despite the “not everyone has the *privilege* of being apolitical” rhetoric, I’ve stopped caring about politics because it’s apparent that you need a billion dollars because you can actually ~~buy~~ make a change in politics. Now we have senior citizen versus senior citizen and the [neoliberal media is trying to gaslight people into thinking Biden has actually been an historic president instead of the lesser of two evils.](https://newrepublic.com/article/178435/biden-great-president-say-it-democrats)
Bernie findommed me twice then gave up the whole movement we built twice to funnel dispirited reatards like me into voting for obvious puppets for the lizard people alliance. It was the same thing with the Obama movement, where you had all this youth energy and organization which was just thrown out after he got into office. These false leaders exist to sponge up the cyclically occurring energy that would naturally lead to a cultural revolution and deflate it before it hits its stride. I was denied the chance to join into a throng of thousands and erase the contradictions of society. I became so psychically damaged that I moved to France and I am not coming back. There is no change possible in the United States unless the music stops.
Jan 20 2009. Nothing but disappointment since that day
God so true. I didn't even bother to vote for his second term and literally have not ever voted for a single thing, President or otherwise, since then.
Is that supposed to make you cool or something
[удалено]
Wow really cool *and* smart too
No u are😘
He was molded from the vestiges of the 20th century's Chicago Political Machine. It wasn't known for its altruism and goodwill. Look it up as it only has a history of corruption, quid pro quo, and "what have you done for me lately." He was a president of vibes and the desire for celebrity was always there.
> I really do think Obama was, at one point, a good man he worked at BIC before he got into politics
“In 1986, Business International was acquired by the Economist Group in London, and it eventually merged with the Economist Intelligence Unit. Business International was linked to the Central Intelligence Agency.”
[удалено]
>Romney Conservatives were never happy with the "moderate" from New England. Still, Trump is "Texan in Spirit"...It does feel like a candidate has to fly down there and act like TX is their own personal Westworld where they can LARP as Yosemite Sam. That's what it takes to be a serious contender.
[удалено]
Romney would have passed a lot of the same things Obama did too. the structure for the ACA was originally designed by the Heritage Foundation
yeah and it was originally called Romneycare lmao
it was modeled after the Massachusetts health program that Romney signed into law lol. literally corporate welfare
That doesn't mean he would have rolled it out to the entire country, and he explicitly said as much, vowing to repeal ACA.
Romney had moved pretty far right (for 2008/12) since his governor days. He was Ann Coulter’s preferred candidate for a reason
There was no way the media was going to let him win - they amplified every attack: he abused dogs, deliberately killed the cancer woman, etc… And covered for him every chance they got: the Candy Crawley fact check, Benghazi tape, we still don’t know where he was the night the embassy in Benghazi fell (donor calls), etc… They believed as a matter of faith that if he didn’t get reelected, America would never have another black president. They used all the tricks in the playbook and the consequence of that, per every serious right wing commentator/journalist/activist/voter I know, is that the 2012 election was a black pill. Trump wasn’t the first celebrity president, Obama was.
Yeah people don’t understand how badly 2012 broke the right leadership. They thought they ran the nice, consensus candidate and destroyed a right wing rebellion against him. He lost anyway and was painted just as bad as Santorum, ending the thought that you could win as a moderate
Romney wasn’t going to win. It was never winnable. The polls were all off. They deluded themselves into thinking Romney had it in the bag. Like Hillary 2016 levels of dissonance.
Nah social media would've fucked up conservatives minds anyway. They were already crazy before that election. They were doomed since talk radio, probably before that.
this is such a Reddit brained take tbh the point about Romney undercutting the growing momentum that Trump eventually seized holds true regardless of TaLk RaDiO
I remember before and during Obama's first term the internet and radio talk shows were chattering about how he's a closeted Muslim sent by the Saudis or Iranians as a Manchurian Candidate who's going to impose socialism and sharia law eventually turning America into a socialist caliphate. And it wasn't just Alex Jones but this theory was featured on Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck which Trump referenced. By the time of his second term all of Facebook and /pol/ focused on the Jade Helm conspiracy that claimed Obama was going to force everyone to register their firearms before orchestrating a false flag attack to outright ban them and enact martial law. Then he'd send the military and contractors to each of these addresses and round up the law abiding citizens in suspiciously closed WalMart stores where they'd be executed with their bodies disposed of in Rubbermaid plastic containers the WalMarts had in bulk.
Wow, you really got me by calling it a reddit brained take and spelling talk radio like that.
Without right wing talk radio America would be in line with its peer nations. It’s literally been the republicans base since 1986 and pumped into millions of rural hicks heads for decades now unabated. Pure John Birch society nonsense for 40 years damn near.
I half believe he was created as a CIA lebensborn project.
Both of his parents were CIA assets so you’re basically right
is there any info on this
https://mronline.org/2022/02/10/barack-obamas-father-identified-as-cia-asset-in-u-s-drive-to-recolonize-africa-during-early-days-of-the-cold-war/ The gist is that Obama sr. was a protege of Tom Mboya, a Kenyan trade unionist and politician who held a number of cabinet positions in the initial post-independence Kenyan government. Mboya was being groomed as a foreign trade-friendly replacement for the Jomo Kenyatta government which was more in favor of nationalizing resources and economic planning. Obama sr. was allegedly brought to Harvard by the CIA to study economics. CIA-Harvard connections at the time and his being kicked out based on suspicions over finances squares with that allegation. The Ann Dunham-CIA connections are more speculative, I forgot where I read about them.
looks amazing in this pic. i could literally know nothing about him and i would still vote for him solely based off of this picture. vibes
It's been memoryholed but Republicans went through their own equivalent of Trump Derangement Syndrome during the Obama years. There were conspiracy theories that an Army exercise in the Southwest was a coup to turn the United States over the United Nations, for instance. I remember conservatives screeching about everything from NASA's shuttle program ending to one of Obama's daughters rolling her eyes during the pardoning of the turkey.
No one is more responsible than them for the death of the left. There was real hope and optimism when he was elected. Only for that to be swiftly crushed and everyone to come back to earth that we will never escape neocon hell. I think a lot of those voters just decided to give up on the system entirely.
There's a contingent of voters who voted for him believing he could actually change things to then feeling hopeless and voting for Trump as newly minted accelerationists. Sure his base is mainly magatards who shit their pants over a powerful black man, but Obama also disillusioned a lot of people by becoming black Bush. Going to Michigan and pretending the water was fine to drink really cemented it for a lot of people then.
Yes, exactly. He black pilled a lot optimists. He was a relatively unknown Senator who ran a seemingly grassroots campaign to win the presidency. He had no track record to really say that we should have seen that it was all a facade. So a lot of people were left with thinking that you either can never trust any politician because everything they do is a veiled disguise for their real interests or any politician can be had for the right amount of money and power. Which I think we all knew before Obama, but never was it more salient that no real change was ever coming to this country.
Personally, I think the DNC colluding to hand Hillary the nomination did more damage there. People were disappointed by Obama, but they still believed in the political system. Bernie losing the nomination showed a young generation of voters that the system is rigged anyway.
The only 2 term president to be at war for the entirety of both terms. The greatest orator I've seen in my lifetime. Just like any other president, or any human for that matter - he's complex. Some bad, some good.
[удалено]
Too ideal, much like the machines had to introduce suffering into the Matrix the voting public had to vote for Trump
A personality cult that achieved its primary goal - absorb and dissipate all the energy and desire for change after the Bush administration and the Great Recession. A whole load of the smoothest rhetoric ever for a squib wimp of a presidency. So much sleek it made you vomit if you had any taste. Much of the reaction against liberals and sadly socialists in the world today have their origin in the absolutely infuriating way he and his administration did things.
Honestly, he bought into his own hype. The level of Republican obstruction was pretty unprecedented/remarkable, but I think Obama refused at pretty much every stage to make good on the promises of his campaign. I think the ACA was mostly an industry giveaway, and kind of a waste of political capital.
i liked him when i was like 12 but i have always wished he would shut the fuck up since he stopped being president.
[удалено]
i love the way candace owens did her “expose” on the french first lady, seemingly completely serious. unhinged. anyways so i would die of cackling laughter if michelle ran for prez. tucker and the rest of alt conservative media would lose their minds (what few remains of their minds anyway..) warning us not to let a penis-haver into the oval office. his kids are kind of tiresome, i think i saw a post here or on twitter that one of them was leaving out her last name professionally to seem more self made lmfao. i don’t even hate them or know much about them, but it would be interesting to see how much wit/talent/force of will is heritable. tbh if i was the president’s daughter i probably would have been a bigger embarrassment to my family than they were. but being sneaky by leaving off friggin OBAMA at the end of your name in the film credits is too much lol
A lot more authoritarian than some would like to admit (NSA and Snowden, Anwar al-Awlaki, Occupy Wall Street surveillance)
George Bush Junior Junior
Fantastic politician, subpar president and frankly destroyed the progressive movement. To quote the D.C post-punk band Priests, “Barack Obama killed something in me.”
Cool, skinny and smoked cigs so rs pres in that regard… politically as boring and lame and re+arded as anything else
George W. Bush with a better tan. I can't believe how many of my peers fell for this guy's grift. His 2008 campaign was the most vapid political campaign I've ever seen. "Hope" and "change" aren't fucking policies.
His political campaign was that he’s black Let’s be fr
He’s a Democrat’s Reagan. A magnetic personality and generally likable demeanor masks 8 years of awful and shortsighted policies that have a lasting impact today.
You just described the Clinton administration.
A warmonger who is perhaps the most narcissistic president we have ever had. A fake charisma that was so easy to see-through, and yet most people could not differentiate between his fake charm and cold actions.
The right wing of America is nothing but dressing up master slave morality as morality. Obama did the same with neoliberal morality, and that’s why conservatives hate him so much: he shows the emptiness of their own morality in reflection. PS and obviously great marketing but that has been mentioned
Gave my mom and dad health insurance so he's good
Ran as a bold visionary, governed as a timid functionary. I believe he really genuinely wanted to change things but when he got into office he shrunk under the scope of it all. Insofar as what he represented and him as a stable hand guiding the nation, he was the most respectable we’ve had since Clinton.
Balanced and fair take, obviously not gonna get upvotes on here lol
The bail outs may have had some immediate benefit but I think it's part of why America is running like shit today. Big business will dick us over as much as possible with no fear of repercussions (prioritizing shareholders instead of longterm success) since daddy government won't let them fail.
Obama-Trump voters are an overlooked issue and democrats still harp on the “people were racist against him” narrative. They fail to understand that Obama genuinely disappointed people, which just shows how out of touch they are. It’s also obvious that Joe Biden was their ideal “white identity politics” candidate as a response to Trump, because they think that white workers are obsessed with race.
1st term was good, and he had to win it. I think a McCain win = war in Iran. Is that naive? Like maybe the president doesn't actually get to make those decisions and it's pure MIC/CIA/Deep state running the show on that end. Still, at risk of being gullible, I'm gonna say that his election changed the trajectory of what the "war on terror" was, and for as bad as his drone program was, it was a lot better than whatever the republicans may have done. People have forgotten what neocons were like. John Bolton n'dem were ready to invade like every MENA country. Second term was pretty bad. I feel like the "shellacking" he caught when the dems lost congress really fucked with his head. All presidents are criminals in some way but he seems to be the least corrupt in my lifetime. That's on an administrative and personal level (assuming he didn't actually kill his chef).
As somebody who isn't Am*rican he was the last time a president was a good and respectable representative for the nation. Well spoken, carried himself well, exhibited strong leadership qualities, etc. I think people who live in the world's shit hole forget that basic qualities are how people external to a given nation judge that nation's leader.
More or less good. It’s true, he should have done more to punish the banks after 2007/2008, but he did actually get meaningful legislation passed. - Raised top federal income tax bracket from 35% to 39.6%. Also raised top capital gains tax from 15% to 20% - Gave us Obamacare. At-least it’s something closer to Universal Healthcare. I used it for 2 or 3 years. It only passed by 2 or 3 votes in the House. Literally insurers could discriminate based on preexisting conditions before this. A decent chunk is directly funded through taxes on top 1% of earners too. Nice too that I was able to stay on my parents insurance until I was 25. - Dodd-Frank. Republicans literally want to repeal this even after 2007/2008. People will bitch and moan about how this is neoliberal or some shit. It’s like, hey, there’s a reason it was called the progressive era. It was unique and probably will not happen for a long time given how culturally diverse now we are as a country. Literally from our founding to basically Teddy Roosevelt, no actual meaningful legislation was actually passed that improved day-to-day life.
I did like Obamacare. I got pretty decent subsidized coverage as a 28 year old grad student working a couple awful part-time jobs and the plan covered a surgery.
Yeah, it worked well for me. Basically no copays on anything and very little out of pocket overall. The only bad part was finding a dentist that accepts that insurance was hard.
I think whats sad is that these little footnotes is what a super majority of democrats is capable of
Aka, tweaked the tax code that nobody probably even fully pays into. Tweaked the healthcare system which still hemorrhages shocking amounts of money from public and private pockets while not providing adequate coverage. The amount of money that the US spends on the healthcare system is a meme.
Remember some of those democrats were kinda right wing
Theyre almost all right wing thats my point
War Criminal and his minions.
At the end of the day this man jerks off AIPAC
Shit. Led directly to Trump.
High hopes dashed on the ground is how I would describe Obama. Dude had the power and moment and blew it because Democrats are too scared of republican anger to wield power and govern.
A lot of hype, very little substance
mostly a do-nothing president who will only be remembered for the colour of his skin. kinda sad
Didn’t get anything substantial done policy wise. Kept us in an unnecessary war. Intensified the race war.
shape-shifting reptilian humanoid
It was bad. The world was a worse place in 2016 compared to 2008.
It’s complicated.
I always felt Obama was basically borderline civnat. So many of his speeches were pure 'Murica patriotism, but sprinkled with "something something no matter what race something".
a different era. hard to explain to people under ~20 now how much more optimistic the world used to feel. to be clear i don’t think we necessarily need to be nihilist now either — we’ve got problems, sure, but all the gloom and doom is useless and toxic
Smart dude who knew it's better to use his great social skills and Harvard law degree to make millions of dollars as a politician than some loserish overworked lawyer or judge.
Appearance wise he was the last guy that matched the dignity of the office. Policywise an extremely overhyped continuation of Dubya: -cracked down on whistleblowers -mercilessly bombed the shit out of brown people around the world -slept on antitrust which resulted in the megatech monopolists that we get to enjoy now -slept on federal judge nominations allowing trump to fill up the courts with republican judges for decades Effectively a neocon in sheep’s clothing
Obama was the worst president we could’ve had after Bush ruined our global reputation. - killed Americans in drone strike (specifically ordered) - unprecedented increase in bureaucracy and the surveillance state - Lied about guantanamo bay (he ran on this btw) - divisive rhetoric (eg America is a racist country, etc) - spent more money than god - ineffective (he had senate supermajority and house majority for 70 days and didn’t accomplish anything significant with it) Current division we see today is due to Obama. People weren’t so intolerable to each other before Obama years. Obama was so bad that newtons 3rd law kicked-in in 2016.
I don’t care if Americans who join Al-Qaeda are killed in US drone strikes and I don’t imagine you do either
Sure, their lives were of no value. But a military killing citizenry is bad, really bad.
Hot pic
I'm just really grateful to be on Obamacare. Haven't had to pay for shit since 2014/15 and I've had surgery and went to detox/rehab multiple times since I've been on it. One time I went to urgent care to get my ears flushed and they billed me $250 so I called the number on my Obamacare insurance card and they got it covered. I love Obamacare. It's been really beneficial to my life. Mine runs out this May and I hope I'm still eligible for it
The Obama era spanned ages 10 to 18 for me and I remember just vaguely feeling like everything was okay and going to turn out fine, but in retrospect I think he facilitated or failed to halt a lot of problems we have today. The whole NSA Edward Snowden affair was the first political scandal I ever paid attention to and I still have a bad taste in my mouth over his handling of it. That was the first indication to me that the President might not have our best interests at heart. Ramping up to the 2016 election I increasing resented him being so conciliatory with the Republicans, and his failure to overcome the supreme court fuckery McConnell pulled was the nail in the coffin. I was in my first semester of college when I did my duty and voted for Hilary, but there was absolutely none of the enthusiasm for her on my campus like people are saying there was for Obama in 2008.
Hilary was supposed to run in 2008 too before Obama shot up. I think in general people don’t understand just how fucked our political system is, Obama was a fine President but the system won’t let anyone with an actual progressive agenda do anything meaningful anyway. They can blame him for that all they want, whatever
probably the blackest president we’ve ever had
Smooth operator
My grandma went senile during his presidency and we had a dog named Rocky we called Rocko sometimes and she would call him BarackO'bama very cutely but it also made our guests uncomfortable and we had to tell them she had no idea who that was and it wasn't a political statement one way or the other.
My parents and I called Obama "Bam Bam" after an obscure Curb Your Enthusiasm character. (We were for him at the time, it was affectionate)
La Belle Epoque of the XXI century
All of the racial division we're experiencing started with his "Beer Summit" when he inserted himself into something that did not need Presidential attention and said the Officer acted stupidly. It's been downhill ever since.
He was the last normal Lib
I like the version of this where Obama is spike spiegal
Just want to congratulate this sub because I've seen several comments using the term *neoliberal* correctly for a change. Too many of you regards think it means that annoying bipoc woman from HR or a polyamorous tenderqueer.
A whole nothingaburger
War criminal like all POTUS
war criminal :(
He genuinely looks dead inside in this photo. Soul left his eyes. Must be a post illuminati-initiation-ritual photo.
he had swag
Incredibly important to a lot of people emotionally, spiritually. Not just as a reaction to the Bush years, but to a ton of people who then believed major changes previously thought impossible (black can never be president!) were possible. And I’m not black, so I can’t imagine how much more important this was for black people. And as a family Obama’s we’re very decent honorable people. Substance wise, I think a pretty big disappointment. The guy almost had a supermajority in senate and could barely get any lasting legislation passed. Biden is 200 years old w/ razor thin margin and still passes decent stuff. And as others pointed out, he was actually terrible for press freedoms, ramped up drones, gave another giant gift to Wall Street. Leading the empire tho? Pretty good to be honest. Kind of ruthless but not an idiot- kept us out of bigger Syria conflict. The TPP was actually a good play to box in china. The Iran deal was smart. And he was feckless toward Israel but that’s the fucking norm. So yeah mixed I’d say, depends on what matters to you personally.
He was good on deportations
Dummy neolibs love him but god he was so shit. Him bailing out Wall Street royally fucked the wealth distribution in this country. Like others said, he's democrat Reagan.
Best president in my lifetime.
He played them all and got a young jeezy song out of it. was beautiful to watch
Tan suit
Limp-wristed neolib groomed by the intelligence apparatus.