That’s it. Dems have moved to the right.
Comment on Obama wasn't a hero; he just wasn't terrible
ToadOfHypnosis@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Obama’s policies were mostly Heritage foundation fed too. The ACA was a Heritage Foundation plan. His bank bail out was a hand out to the rich without consequence. His foreign policy was bad towards the middle East and awful for human rights. He deported more people than any president before him. By all metrics, he was a Republican. He was historic, sure, but I don’t think he was any better than Biden in relation to policies that helped regular people or embrace of the anti-human rights policies. People’s memories tend to soften situations or maybe just politics was more muted at the time. Democrats have been right wing lite for my whole life.
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
immutable@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Thank you.
I feel like a crazy person sometimes because I remember when the ACA was rolling along it was reported that it was just the Heritage Foundation, a notoriously right wing think tank, plan.
I looked into it because I thought “certainly this can’t be true, hope and change and all that” I went and looked up their plan. It was a market based approach that used tax incentives and penalties to increase the size of the insurance pool.
That’s the ACA.
And people act like it’s some litmus test of progressive policy success.
This is what I’ll never forgive Obama about. He captured an entire generation of voters energy stumping with progressive speeches about making real change. He had no real desire to do that, constantly governing from the center / center right.
So that whole generation learned a lesson, progressive policies don’t work. Which is amazing considering that we didn’t even try any. We somehow passed a bunch of corporate friendly policies and peoples lives didn’t get meaningfully better and they chalked it up to “progressives don’t have an answer either”
I think this is a contributing factor to the absolute shit show we find ourselves in today. America has deeply broken problems that are entrenched because them existing makes someone very rich. Not the same guy for every problem, but for every problem in America you can rest assured there’s a small group of assholes that need that problem to exist so they can buy a third yacht. People feel that pain and they went “well fuck, the lefts best orator, the guy with a vision and plan and skills couldn’t fix it” then along comes trump being a blowhard jackass saying “I can fix it” and people were like “sure, let’s try it”
Obama could have actually delivered on that change, it wouldn’t have been easy, he would have had to actually use that supermajority for the few weeks it existed to pass legislation. He would have had to bring blue dogs to heel or blow up the filibuster. But if he could have found the gumption to do it, and those policies meaningfully improved peoples lives, he would have cemented multiple decades of democratic dominance.
Instead he passed uninspiring half assed solutions that tinkered around the edges of our societies most difficult problems. Structured them so that all the pain would be felt up front and all the benefits would slowly phase in over time. Tried to find compromise so that the right wouldn’t attack him and even after giving everything away they screeched about death panels.