I don’t see what this has got to do with what @Hope.in.your.heart said. Even if what he said is a trope.
I didn’t state that all democrats are weak and crap, you said that.
My take on Obama is one taken with hindsight. I had high hopes at the time that he’d be able to shake up the tree as he promised, but in the end, his presidency amounted to not much and even contributed to amplify the polarization within the nation.
All that doesn’t mean that I support absolute scum like Reagan, both Bushes or Trump. You should know better.
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That’s why I said what I did. We need to ‘watch’ what we say in hind sight as it hets picked up on and used. They won’t give an inch but as we have seen the media and even lefties will pick up on these snippets and use it as evidence …
That’s very passive voice for something where there is very clear blame. Obama’s presidency was a divisive one, but that was because of who he was not what he did.
Yes, he seemed at times to try too hard to reach across the aisle.
Yeah can’t argue with that. He was always set up for division due to whom he was, and that probably lead him to be indecisive at times. So he got the bad end on both records: he got further polarization of the country (not his fault) while not achieving much (ie.keeping Guantanamo open).
As evidence of what? In my book, Obama wasn’t a good president and could have done more than what he did, given the historical chance presented to him in 2008.
My opinion, whether right or wrong, has nothing to do with a part of the GOP devolving into a fascist party.
I think he did a good job of bringing the country out of recession - took the opposite approach to the UK and pumped money into the economy which I think was self-evidently the correct course of action. We can quible about where that money went, and Obama himself wasn’t 100% satisfied with how much had to be given to “special projects” (vote winning local issues, not of national importance) to get Senators on board but generally he did a good job there.
Then you have Obamacare which has been a net positive. After that I think he basically ran out of political capitol.
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How can it not. If you acknowledge that the president is not a magician that can just unilaterally make things happen, how can you treat the descent into facism of the other party, one that controlled important levers of government during his presidency, as essential context?
It’s largely forgotten now over the subsequent fights, but he spent a critical amount of his political capital even before that getting the critical and ultimately middle of the road economic recovery acts passed. They didn’t need the votes of the Republicans in the House, but Eric Cantor lied about the negotiations and then poisoned the public dialgue about what was happening and why. That meant an essential piece of legislation that was in line with orthodox economic thought and criticized in middle of the road places for being too small set the stage for the Republicans being in not just opposition, but positioning themselves as mortal enemies of the administration. Phase II of the bail out was policies directed to directly help the individuals and this was really where the tea party came in and supposedly serious leaders like Eric Cantor jumped on board in their opposition to that. I think that, even before the Obamacare debates, is really the tipping point of our politics and a point we never recovered from. This is was all just months into his first term.
So when people complain that Obama was a let down because he “only bailed out the banks” it ignores that 1) that was the foundational essential step that was required to stop the system collapsing, 2) was then blocked from doing more for individuals, 3) and just in a more general sense how quickly he had all his political capital exhausted because of the nature of the opposition the GOP led against him, enabled by an overly credulous main stream press.
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No I acknowledge that this part isn’t Obama’s problem, how could it? But I still think that he wasn’t a great president, which the historical situation probably needed. That being said, I don’t think you’ve had a great president since Theodor Roosevelt. An absolute bastard, but one with a vision.
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You mean FDR, surely?
No, the one who broke up the mega-trusts between 1901 and 1909.
I’m not sure I’d call FDR a great president, but maybe I’m unfair on him. Ok, let’s say that he too was a great president, due to his efforts during WW2.
WW2 for sure, great work etc.
I was thinking more of The New Deal. I’d have that down as one of the best achievements in modern political history.
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Was FDR behind that? Ok I’m sold, a great president. 
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Fucking hell.
50 migrants found dead in a lorry.
Which Republicans are blaming on Biden’s “open border policy” 
Agreed. For all his calm charisma and intellect, Obama was far too inexperienced politically for the presidency.
I don’t know. I dont think it was inexperience that gave him the problems he did, but more a lack of imagination of how rapidly and how far the opposition would descend into a non-serious party who refused to hold up their role in the process of governing. If anything his newness to Washington meant he was someone not bought into the myth of the way Washington is supposed to work meant he identified the extent of the dysfunction quicker than most would have. He treated the 2012 election as an opportunity for the fever that had overtaken the GOP to break, assuming that another loss would be the kick in the balls they needed to regain heir seriousness. When it didn’t happen he governed in a very different way in his second term. Some people may have identified the inadequacies of treating politics as normal for as long as he did, but no one would have had the political capital to act on that and be productive. The political press is barely capable of acknowledging that today, less alone in 2012 and would have made his position untenable if he tried to govern the way people on the left are calling for Biden to do now.
A piece on the absurdity of the implementation of Judicial Originalism
Even ignoring that as a concept it flies in the face of what we know the framers thought of their own constitution (an imperfect compromise that was implemented as a first step with full appreciation that it would need to be fixed in an ongoing fashion), it highlights the lack of suitability of the justices to apply such a philosphy.
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A very good, and fucking frustrating, read.