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Comment by V__ | Hacker News Reader

Obama was elected, which made some people very angry:

> Here’s John Boehner, the likely speaker if Republicans take the House, offering his plans for Obama’s agenda: “We’re going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”

> Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his plan to National Journal: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Sure Trump took everything to an absurd level of "do the opposite of biden no matter what", but it started back then.

[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-compromis...

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> The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

I remember that day vividly.

It was the middle of the Great Recession, it was the worst our economy was doing in a long time. Millions were out of work. People were looking to the government to see what the plan was to get the country back on track.

A reporter asks McConnell what the senate’s number one priority was.

The answer? Not fixing the economy, not helping out every day Americans. Not finding the root cause of the crash and making sure it doesn’t happen that way again.

No, the answer was “make sure Obama is a one term president.” That’s all we would expect from the senate for the next 6 years.

The day McConnell said that, I said out loud: “I will never vote Republican again for the rest of my life.” (Prior to that point I mostly voted D but not 100% of the time.)

And I plan to keep that promise until I die.

have democrats not made similar statements about Trump, him being a danger to democracy and such?

Sure. And Republicans, and many world leaders.

Trump is well outside the norms of POTUS's through history.

In 2008-9 Republicans did not even make the pretense of Obama being a threat to democracy. (Which would have been absurd in a way it isn't for Trump, who tried to overthrow an election he lost.)

I remember when some lady called Obama "Muslim" (in the same tone of voice as she'd say "demon" or something) and Mitt Romney took the microphone from her and said "no, no, we disagree politically but he's a good man."

Shows how poorly those politicians understood the constituency they were fomenting. He was boo'd for it by people that had come to see him specifically, and about 15 years later, republican voters built a scaffold outside the Capital they were breaking into while chanting about hanging the Republican vice president.

I feel like American politicians often play with fire without understanding its nature as something that burns.

Sit down.

I recommend John Boehner's book. He complimented Obama often, stated he & his team were far more ready than McCain to work with Bush on the economy. They were smoking buddies.

As far as I can tell they hated Obama not for what he did, said or believed. Those things were quite middle of the road.

They hated him for what he was.

But his tan suit!!

Didn’t help that he showed up at his first couple Senate meetings gloating about winning the election. And tried to set working hours for his former colleagues. Among other things.

"Other things" most obviously being the racism caused in part by significant cognitive dissonance that uniquely affects white supremacists when having a black president.

Well, those things sound very quaint compared to what Trump did and does, no matter if you take his first or his second term...

The audacity! I’m clutching my pearls.

Obstructionism as a core tenet of the (former) Republican platform is reprehensible, and retrospectively probably led to quite a bit of discontent with the government’s inability to address problems that Americans face. That same discontent fomented the current reactionary swing, so in the end maybe they really got what they wanted. Shameful.

Right on. That's probably the worst part of the debilitating self-own we're currently going through. Even if conservatives (aka Democrats) gain back Congress, then gain back the Presidency, then overcome their controlled opposition dynamic where enough inevitably defect and undermine anything meaningful from getting done, so much has been broken that we will be lucky if they even manage to stop the hemorrhaging. Even if the Republicans that got "dragged into" the fascist fever start to have a bit of self-reflection to realize the damage they've done. We've got what, maybe 8 years until the malcontents' dog whistle refrains start to have credence again and then we're right back to staring down the destructionists - with a trail having already been blazed.

Gloating? Oh no! We should impeach him!

bs. obama fucked up healthcare even more, bombed everyone (even americans) and deported more than trump.

color bait.

He did that before he was elected?

History rhymes.

I'd have to be full on, 100% retarded to have voted for Donald Trump.

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