Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jan 10 2022 04:47pm)
Sorry, but I think the bolded part is completely deluded. When Obama entered office, he had a wide margin in the House and 58 seats in the Senate, which later expanded to the only filibuster-proof majority any party has had in that chamber during our lifetime.
Today, we're talking about a very different, more ideologically streamlined and radical Democratic party than back in 2009. They are still reeling from the trauma of 2016 and four years of Trump, influenced by an ever growing progressive caucus which has become triple digits strong. Give this party the same amount of wiggle room Obama had and you get a $10 trillion spending package, HR1 signed into law 1 week after inauguration, a packed Supreme Court and federal judiciary, full-blown amnesty including a fast-track to citizenship, the complete federalization of national elections, a massive hollowing out of the 2nd amendment as well as sweeping "hate speech" legislation to punish any wrongthink. And probably some overzealous climate legislation and zany shit like reparations to the Taliban or 100% federal cost coverage for third-trimester abortions.
If they end up with 55-58 votes in the Senate instead of 60, they probably go nuclear and then pass all of the above.
From a liberal pov, Biden could and should have achieved more than he did, but we must be realistic and acknowledge that he came from a fundamentally different starting position than Obama.
I think there's more to being dealt a hand than just the partisan numbers in congress. Obama inherited two increasingly unpopular yet entrenched wars, an unstable mideast, an economy that had just blown up catastrophically, recoveries from national disasters, north korea and iran rushing towards nuclear weapons, guantanamo, terrorism paranoia, etc etc. Sure, Obama had a better position to be able to launch the policies he wanted, but those policies were responses to the failures waiting for him when he took the oval office. Obama had the voter's mandate to tackle the failed state of health insurance in America, but that was an issue with no easy solution. That partisan filibuster-proof majority was enough to summon Obamacare into its tortured, twisted abomination of an existence. They had the freedom to pass any healthcare policy they wanted, and they passed a bill that promised it would make healthcare more affordable and let you keep your doctor. Instead it imploded the markets at state levels and skyrocketed costs until they started pumping debt into risk corridors to prop it up artificially. Sure it was a failure of policymaking, but that was a failed attempt at solving an intractable problem that existed before Obama took office, like the whole HMO situation.
I don't think its a real fair criticism of Obama to say he had everything handed to him on a silver platter and
then bungled it. He took over the country at a very low point and inched it upwards and then hit a wall and stagnated- in terms of economy, foreign and domestic policy and the health of political discourse. Remember that when Trump won the election, his main criticism of his predecessor was that Obama had overseen the "
slowest recovery". If Obama had it easy from the start, it wouldn't be a recovery. But I do think its still fair to say Obama bungled what he was given. Where the Bush Doctrine was drunken, bullheaded unilateralism that crashed recklessly, the Obama Doctrine was carefully considered dispassionate maneuvering that steered us confidently into every tree.