Obama is a huge part of why this happened. He promised change and delivered empire.
Liberalism has had a smug aspect as long as I've been alive, but at this point that aspect has metastasized to something worse. The norms that have developed are toxic to progressive movements. They certainly alienate people, but beyond that they make it so you don't even have the institutional capacity to understand or formulate policies relevant to those people.
It's a perverse version of the situation people thought Republicans were in in 2012, where they seemed to have driven out most non-white people and thereby lacked the capacity for effective outreach to them. Except in this case, if you're a poor white male in Wisconsin who's done everything right but is still struggling like hell, you're an evil oppressor who just doesn't recognize your privilege. People who can understand where the poor white male perspective is coming from are literally shouted out of discussions for diverting attention from the people uniquely experiencing True Suffering and blessed with progressive sainthood.
It's beyond Obama. Who, for what it's worth, has always struck me as the thoughtful type who wouldn't buy into those kinds of fake dichotomies. It's a broader issue with progressive movements where people earn cred by honing their sensitivities enough to maximize the level of offense they can experience.
Ironically, some of that might have been his own doing, though. The healthcare reform was passed essentially without republican support; I think that's a very rare example of major [healthcare] legislation that was not passed with bi-partisan support. Not doing more to bring R's on board likely burned lots of political capital and hardened opposition to him in Congress. I'm not saying Obama didn't try at all to bring R's on board, just that a bit more effort might have result in a more cooperative Congress.
You’re right that the ACA ended up being a political disaster for the Democrats though.
The ACA was basically the same as “RomneyCare” in MA, and was a style of healthcare reform supported by mainstream center-right Republicans and some center-left Democrats (most Democrats wanted a single payer plan, or at least a public option, but took what they could get because the healthcare system was/is at a breaking point), but once Obama’s name was on it they all decided to throw everything they could against it.
The GOP campaigned hard against the ACA after it passed, and won massively in the midterm elections in 2010 on the back of wall-to-wall anti-ACA messaging on right-leaning media and a huge amount of organizing and spending (the first post-Citizens United election). They took control of the House, Senate, and many state legislatures, following which they redrew all the district boundaries to cut Democrats permanently out of competition in the House and many state legislatures.
After the crushing defeat in 2010, there weren’t enough Senate seats up for grabs in 2012 for the Democrats to regain control. Thus Obama had to deal with 6 years of GOP control, which has been the most obstructionist Congress in US history. As soon as McConnell won in 2010 he publicly declared that his #1 goal was to make Obama a 1-term president. We had multiple government shutdown threats, unprecedented obstruction of executive appointments including judges at every level of the federal court system, bogus investigation after bogus investigation into e.g. Benghazi, and dozens of purely symbolic votes to repeal the ACA.
Romneycare never really had widespread support of Republicans at the national level. Or, really, the support of Republicans in general. It was passed by a governor in a state where almost every single elected state legislator is a Democrat, so it's hardly a measure of what to expect Republicans to support when the population they represent is more moderate, conservative, or Republican-affiliated.
Using Romney's actions as governor of MA as a yardstick is a really skewed perspective to try and apply to national politics. Massachusetts has a history of electing Republican governors as a way of placing a "check" on the legislature. Currently, Massachusetts has a Republican governor - but Baker would likely have run under the Democratic party if we were talking about Montana or Kansas instead of Massachusetts.
> and some center-left Democrats (most Democrats wanted a single payer plan, or at least a public option, but took what they could get because the healthcare system was/is at a breaking point)
It was never the case that "most" Democrats wanted a single-payer plan. The public option was more popular within the Democratic party, but even then was very controversial, and didn't have strong enough support from the Democrats.
There was, incidentally, a proposal that did have bipartisan support (the Wyden-Bennett bill), but it fell short of 60 votes.
He didn't have to bring any Republicans on board. What he had to have was the integrity to push for what he had the mandate to deliver, instead of all of this pre-compromising, losing anyway, then eventually quarter-assing something through presidential fiat or lack of enforcement. If President Obama had chosen to pursue the policies that Candidate Obama had been elected on, the voters would have punished congressmen who got in his way. Instead he had one of the least transparent administrations imaginable, passed a bunch of complex garbage with a million special interest carveouts, and tried to create social change through undemocratic executive action.
After his first year in office, Obama started getting shit from people on the left because a lot of them thought he was trying too hard to reach across the isle and unify the nation instead of ignoring the obstructionists and getting stuff done.
http://www.politico.com/story/2010/01/obama-rumbles-with-hou... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/ja...
> Consider that Obama's $787bn stimulus bill of last spring was heavily weighted toward tax cuts, against the advice of many economists, in an effort to win some Republican support. In the end, the bill received not a single Republican vote.
> Consider that he nominated a moderate, pro-prosecution Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor, only to see her tagged as a racist over some rather innocuous remarks she made about being a "wise Latina".
> Consider, too, that healthcare reform became bogged down in such a compromise-ridden mess because Obama ruled out a single-payer system ahead of time and never strongly backed a government-owned insurance alternative (the "public option") to compete with private insurance companies.
> As with the stimulus bill, the idea was to bring along a few Republican senators thought to hold reasonable views on the subject, such as Charles Grassley of Iowa and Olympia Snowe of Maine. And again, no Republican support was forthcoming, forcing Senate leaders to cut outrageous deals with recalcitrant Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
> Obama's attempts to find compromise solutions did not stop Republicans from labelling him as a radical – or their nutty tea-party allies from calling him a "socialist" and worse. And, in retrospect, that was going to happen no matter what he did. His real problem has been that, to his supporters, he looked as though he'd been sucked into the very system he was elected to reform. Thus an Obama ally like Martha Coakley, a loyal Democratic apparatchik who'd long been criticised for her reluctance to take on political corruption in Massachusetts, became the perfect foil. (Coakley is best known for prosecuting Louise Woodward, a British nanny accused of killing a baby in her care.)
uh, WOW. you must have a short memory because reagan, bush sr, and clinton were all superior in almost every way, and none will eat a terrible policy failure like the aca.
So, in your perspective, what was something that made Bush Sr a superior president to Obama? Or any of the others you listed? Help me understand your perspective.
Illegal immigration is down, unemployment is down, crime is down.
There are definitely things Obama hasn't done, but he absolutely delivered change, and he did it while facing a completely obstructionist Congress and Senate for most of his tenure. People just get complacent, even when things are going great. No matter how much any president does, or how good things are, people will get antsy just because our human nature forces us to constantly avoid what we perceive as stagnation.
Not really. It's not at the point of collapse, but it sure wasn't a normal recovery. It's better than 2008, but it's still broken in some very real ways.
> ... ending the war in Iraq (done)...
Sort of. The battle for Mosul was in the news just last week, with US involvement.
> ... restoring our relationship with the rest of the world (done)...
Russia is fighting against our goals in Syria, and illegally occupied the eastern Ukraine. Iran has a nuclear deal with us, but immediately started thumbing its nose at us. China is trying to see how much influence they can gain at our expense in Asia. North Korea's nuclear and missile programs are, according to their rhetoric, aimed explicitly at us.
> ... universal health care (done)...
Seen the premium changes for 2017? The law was passed, but "bending the cost curve" sure didn't happen.
But the 'normal' recovery? What does a 'normal' recovery look like when the global economy is on the brink of collapse, and the US has run up a deficit never seen before? The Great Depression needed a World War to finally pull the US back to recovery.
I'm amused by the Republican concern for rising premiums this year. My health insurance rates have gone up every year by 5-10% for the last 10 years after my work switched to high deductible plans. Between my employer and I the total cost of insurance is $14,400/year. That's more than the total income tax for a median income back in my country of birth. Just for insurance!
There are a lot of things wrong with the ACA/Obamacare but let's not pretend that the giant mess known as the American medical system is solely the responsibility of the Democrats. Every other OECD nation seems to have figured it out....
The first time I remember him talking about reform of Washington.
Edit: to clarify this is not my personal position but more a reflection on how I see the electorate behaving.