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Comment by jrm4 | Hacker News Reader

I genuinely can't believe, still, that I have to spell this out for people.

Obama did not do a U-turn. It is the worst naivete to think that what happened was "he had big ideas and he changed his mind." He had to bring up big ideas to get elected, and then he got elected the first Black president and some of you seem entirely too dense to actually grasp what that means. President. Not King.

Subject to all of those checks and balances you hear about and then some.

You people act as if he could wave a wand and just sweep away everyone and everything who was against his big ideas, when the opposite was at play.

Please, grow a better sense of politics.

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There are plenty of instances in which Obama, despite campaigning on a platform of change from Bush-era policies, continued or even furthered those policies. A good example which is relevant here involves government surveillance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_on_mass_surveilla...

Snowden has also spoken about this at length, saying he expected a change when Obama was elected due to his campaigning against the PATRIOT Act, but there was no change. This is only one of many policies in which Obama changed his stance after he became President.

Other people have mentioned mass surveillance and other ways that Obama expanded the law enforcement power of the federal government, but I'll add another thing.

Based on Rahm Emanuel's advice, the Obama administration did not focus political capital on the federal judiciary. Not only did Obama fail to get RBG to retire when she could be confidently replaced by a liberal, he didn't take judicial placements in the lower courts as seriously as he should have. The courts are substantial part of how we got here.

Yes, Obama was not a king. But there was stuff he absolutely could have done, especially during his first two years when he had the trifecta, that he didn't take seriously.

> Not only did Obama fail to get RBG to retire when she could be confidently replaced by a liberal, he didn't take judicial placements in the lower courts as seriously as he should have. The courts are substantial part of how we got here.

I imagine there was a lot of complacency based on the (erroneous) assumption that Hillary Clinton would be his successor.

It does appear that RBG wanted to be replaced by a Clinton appointee and the Obama administration didn't push terribly hard to snap her out of this. This was, of course, outrageous foolish politicking and contributed to the mess we are in.

RBG was a 75 year old cancer survivor in 2008. She should have stepped down in 2010 and the Obama administration should have put public pressure on her to do so.

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It is of course RBG's fault at the base of it. Obama couldn't fire her or whatever.

But by all accounts Obama did not push her very hard or treat this as a priority. He shouldn't have just asked nicely and then gone away once she said no. They could have built a public media narrative around pressuring her to retire.

It's quite possible Obama considered that and decided he would get the sort of response you would get telling your teenage daughter not to date the bad boy. Sometimes pressuring people backfires.

Again. Think about all that Notorious RBG merch etc.

Do you people not understand the "anti-feminist" backlash this would have caused?

Y'all are really doing a whole lot of checkers thinking for what is a chess game.

Consider the framing today: "Trump is doing all these terrible things, making all of these drastic changes, exploiting the system to his will."

The Dems can no longer use the excuse that the president is handcuffed. Trump 2.0 is showing us what the president can do. The dems consistently use that excuse to prevent popular policies from being enacted. Obama even had a ~6mo super majority where he could have codified abortion rights. But instead they keep it around as an outstanding issue because it is a good fundraising issue.

It is astoundingly naive to think that the forces in America make it such that "whoever is the president has unlimited power, whether they're an old rich white billionaire or a relatively young black guy on the Dem side."

Again, I implore you all to grow a bit smarter.

People acting like the supreme court would overturn laws in favor of obama the way they do for trump...

We'll never know because RBG chose not to retire when Dems could have done anything, and every Dem after that just politely waited for GOP to take advantage of them. It's still happening with folks like Jeffries today being utterly willing to capitulate on policy if it means the institution is respected.

I don't want my President to act like a dictator even if they're on "my side." Some things are more important than policy.

Obama understood this and respected the office. Trump took a fat dump on the office and I'm not sure if our country's values will ever recover from this race to the bottom.

> Obama understood this and respected the office

At a bare minimum, he signed into law the NDAA of 2012, which authorized the government to ignore people's civil liberties in cases where they were suspected of terrorism. On that basis I do not personally agree that he respected the office.

This is apologetic liberal tactic to keep the status quo. US president is still the most powerful political position on the planet. They can do stuff you know.

Obama is not some good hearted hero who had his hands tied. He ran on pretty progressive campaign because it polled well and when he came to office he just did what his sponsors wanted - keep status quo.

It was keeping the money in pockets of billionaires and corporations while talking about promise of potential change by the most charismatic president ever.

That's why people don't trust democrats.

>It was keeping the money in pockets of billionaires and corporations while talking about promise of potential change by the most charismatic president ever.

Are you talking about Obama or Trump?

> US president is still the most powerful political position on the planet. They can do stuff you know.

And this is why people don't trust republicans. They are all "checks and balances" and "Constitution" until the dictatorship they want is upon them.

Biden try to forgive student loans. The courts blocked him. They clearly cannot just "do stuff you know". Not without risk of impeachment for executive overreach.

To be clear Trump is also about keeping status quo. He is just much more blatantly corrupted so he will sell to highest bidder instead of honoring past allies/deals.

These limits of power were always Obamas excuse when he was supposed to push for something inconvinient. That was the narrative to not try too hard. When you start to look at what hes done… the small things, the mundane and the stuff he had clearly power over. It's not good. Biden was very different in that aspect.

I believe in the foundational governance principles in the Constitution more than whatever liberal policy liberals say we "desperately need."

I don't want a liberal Trump.

>Trump 2.0 is showing us what the president can do.

If a Democrat did any of the hundreds of actions performed this year, they'd be blocked by the SCOTUS, and then impeached by the House because they ignored the SCOTUS. And probably Convicted by Senate.

A democrat has not been able to do something as bold as blasting through the courts since FDR (and for that time, the term "democrat" may not even be the correct word to use), and that was under a depression with very popular support from the people. Imagine if congress flipped and fought as hard against SS as they did against the ACA. The Silent and Boomer generations would be in shambles decades later.

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