> The ACA was the best compromise that could be struck at the time,
That's not he way the ACA went down. Obama had this idea that the best way to reform an industry was to have it write its own reform legislation and pretty much let the industry have first draft.
> with a large portion of the population being dead set against better healthcare if it meant allowing Obama to be able to take credit for it.
The ACA was initially popular but it became increasingly unpopular during the months of horse trading, the explosion in length of the law, the jettisoning of most of the good parts (drug price controls, public option, etc), retention and expansion of industry giveaways (tax penalties), and yes, relentless Republican opposition and propaganda against it.
But even the latter was Obama's fault for not being prepared to anticipate and deal. He actually spend the first several months pushing for a "bipartisan" deal with Republicans that gave them room to delay and attack.
> with a large portion of the population being dead set against better healthcare if it meant allowing Obama to be able to take credit for it.
Obama had a filibuster-proof supermajority in congress. Yes, Republicans were going to oppose his agenda, but he didn't need them. For some dumb reason he loaded a gun, pointed it at himself and handed it to them.
There were lots of comparisons to Medicare/Medicaid being made at the time. That law was a fraction the size of ACA, the implementation phase was like a year instead of a decade for the ACA, and its effect on the public was immediate and profound.
The failure of the Obama administration was the failure of technocracy. Obama thought he could have "experts" develop the ultimate "win-win" policy. What you ended up instead was a bunch of naked self-dealing by craven opportunists who either worked for the industries they were regulating or intended to do so in the future. People saw through this and it lead directly the the rise of Trump