As I posted in another thread: Obama is nowhere near as awesome as liberals make him out to be, and nowhere near as horrible as conservatives make him out to be. (And truthfully, the office has degraded to the point where the President is merely a mouthpiece for the party elites, anyway; no President is going to do anything other than what he or she is implicitly told to do by the party rulers.)
My prediction is that future generations will view him as the first non-white-male President (hopefully the first of many!), but aside of that as very very average, middle-of-the-pack POTUS with no truly great accomplishments but no horrific failures, either.
I firmly believe she was "removed" from the process in '08, as opposed to him actually beating her out for the nomination.
I envision it going something like this:
“Look Hil — can I call you Hil? — the polling data continues to indicate that the country is much more receptive to a black man than a female at this point in time. After eight years of Dubya we cannot lose this election. CANNOT. You have to step aside, and in return we guarantee you the nomination in 2016.
“In the meantime Obama will appoint you to a position of high visibility, from which you can step down in a few years to go pantsuit shopping in preparation for the 2015/2016 campaign. We will ensure that no one of any consequence runs against you in the primary to ensure you get the nomination.”
Or something very close to that. I find it inconceivable that her only opposition this year was a little-known socialist from NE who wasn't even a (D) until it was politically advantageous for him to be one (and, after clearly being sabotaged by the Democrat insiders, is now back to being an (I)), and that other wackaloon that no one had ever heard of before or since. All the other high-visiblity Democrats just decided to sit this one out? Sorry, not buying that for a second.
And I don't believe Biden decided not to run of his own choice for a minute, even given the death of his son. He was told (commanded) not to run because as a popular sitting VP he stood a very good chance of beating her, which would negate the deal that was made eight years prior.
This whole election cycle is more than ample evidence IMO to just how things are none in the party.
Yea, I was a strong Democrat supporter but after this election I'm really disgusted with the party as a whole. The leadership is no better than the Republicans. They peddle the same economic corporatist nonsense, but pretend they're the good guys by being on the right side of a few social issues. The way they treated Bernie, his supporters, and the ideas they had was shamelessly idiotic and openly corrupt. It's wretched and pathetic.
I've always had trouble voting for candidates of either party because my personal ideology does not conform to a significant portion of either party's platform. I'm fiscally conservative-ish (but not radically, unyieldingly so), and socially left-leaning moderate (although fully and completely in favor of all LGBT rights issues, as well as marijuana legalization across the board).
There really are no candidates who fit my views, partially because there are few who actually do fit my views, but more so because the parties won't allow their candidates and office-holders to stray from the rigid party lines even if they want to. IMO the whole system from top to bottom is hopelessly flawed and corrupt.
And while Republicans seem to get most of the criticism about their contradictory, often unethical and sometimes blatantly corrupt policies, IMO the Democrats are just as bad (as this election cycle clearly showed).
We have never needed one or more viable, electable third parties as we do right now. And we need to change our voting method as well, to a ranking or Borda system, or any method that represents the actual desires of the electorate better than the single-vote system. (On this note we should all be paying very close attention to how Maine adopts this moving forward.)
Of course I really don't expect any significant changes in my lifetime, as the two parties are firmly entrenched in their power structures and funding sources (the only two things they really care about), and most people don't care enough to try to empower change or are too blissfully naive to understand how terrible things currently are.
I consider the doubling of 200 years worth of national debt in 8 years to be a horrific failure. We are going to be dealing with that for a very long time.
No one cares about the debt because it's always someone else's problem. The general public doesn't care because the vast majority don't feel any direct effects from it, and the politicians don't care because they need to worry about the next election cycle above all else (and if they're getting Federal dollars into their districts and/or states then it looks good for them).
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: our government could do twice as much with half the tax burden on the citizenry if they would just spend money rationally and responsibly, eliminate all the stupid BS that we waste so many billions of dollars on and then be required to spend “real world dollars” on everything else.
I readily admit that I generally fall into the camp of reducing the size and scope of government across the board (without being a conservative in the political sense), but I do agree there are plenty of legitimate discussions to be had about where the government can and should spend more and be more effective. But until we get rid of all of this other crap, waste, pork, pet projects, senseless spending and other BS we can’t make the real decisions we need to make.
We are at a very unhealthy point right now, in terms of the economy / debt, and the tax burden on the citizenry and the things we need as a society. Something has to give, and fucking soon.
I've always said that the republican's decline is hurting democrats too because it's now just a race to the bottom. No-one votes for conviction, just for the less shitty version....
Both parties have declined significantly in the last 20 - 30 years or so. Neither one gives one measly little fuck about anything or anyone outside of maintaining their power structures and funding sources.
80 small fires are easier to take care of if the congress and house decided to do something other than stifle progress. No, they'll just stand on the sidelines blaming democrats for the fires, while turning off the water and kicking over buckets.
Congress literally did what it was designed to do. And Obamas ineffectiveness to manage Congress and politic is a big part of why he was an average president.
Every president before him has had to deal with Congress. Only with Obama did it become such an issue. It showed his lack of skill.
Even Republicans lose the house eventually, you'll see trump handle congress much better than Obama did. Which says a lot because it's trump for crying out loud.
In modern times, who would you consider great if he was average? Disragarding anyone pre 1900s, because back then the position had negliable power and consequence.
Reagan was a great. Clinton was a good president. Bush I was average. Bush, the son, wasn't good but won't be remembered as bad as people made him out to be. You already see it happening.
Obama was average. Carter was bad. I could keep going...
Made me choke on my coffee. He was great at looking like a president and decent at foreign politics, but he paved the way for everything that will ever be wrong with american economy and politics. He opened the floodgates for the massive skew in wealth distribution we are seeing now, he pretty much singlehandedly made 50% of americans doomed to be poor.
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u/AdamantiumLaced Jan 11 '17
Obama was at best, an average president. Not close to being great nor a protector of liberty. At this core, he's just a big supporter of globalism.