However, amid Obama’s media tour unveiling his new $850 million presidential center, documents obtained by Zeteo and the Lever through an open records request show Obama as president scoffing at demands that he more forcefully navigate those same barriers on health care policy, when he and his party controlled the White House and large majorities in Congress.
The documents also show Obama’s staff cheering him on after he rebuffed a supporter who was disappointed by the president’s surrender on his promise to enact a public health insurance option — a proposal that conservative Democrats continue to tout today as an alternative to Medicare for All.
I love revisionist history.
Obama never ‘controlled’ the Congress.
The ACA in it’s current form barely scraped past.
He got the best deal he could, not the deal he actually wanted.
Party had a supermajority
Obama had a mandate for a public option
He immediately caved to Republicans and “blue dogs” (controlled oppo)
He didn’t fight for it. He didn’t rally the public. He went straight for a republican healthcare plan
And how many of those Blue Dogs would have demanded his scalp if he’d done what you suggest?
Maybe read the article.
The article is referencing statements made in 2009-2010 from Obama where his excuses for not getting a public option was the parliamentarian. Yet, now Obama says we should be doing things like steamrolling the parliamentarian when he used that as an excuse himself for why he couldn’t get a better bill out.
It’s not revisionist history if they’re referencing documents from that period of time.
Further, the person who they interview, whose letter Obama responded to, still sings high praises for Obama while simultaneously having a different view of the Obama administration simply because of the long-term effects, some of which people warned would happen, like creating a domestic spying network could get handed to a fascist, or that not prosecuting war criminals emboldened other criminals, not jailing more of Wall Street, I could go on.
Obama is the best president of my lifetime.
The problem is the bar is incredibly fucking low here. The people he is up against are both Bushes, Clinton, Biden, and Trump. Obama outshines them all, but they also all fucking sucked hard in their own ways, so it’s not like he’s up against quality.
when he and his party controlled the White House and large majorities in Congress.
That’s the revision.
What are you talking about? Obama had a large majority in Congress and 60 senators when he too office. He did fuck all and squandered it on a bullshit quest for “bipartisanship”.
They held majorities in both chambers for over a year, and he still used the Parliamentarian as an excuse for why he couldn’t get a public option. Now he tells us the Democrats need to stop doing the gentleman’s handshake and fight hard… which he didn’t do himself. It just rings hollow.
One could argue he learned the lesson at hand from, you know, nearly a decade of proof that bipartisanship is dead and the conservatives he tried to work with either swerving from neoconservatives to open fascists or getting forced out of office by the same.
But, of course, only you are allowed to change your mind based on evidence, it’s the god given right of the protagonist.
One could also argue he could have learned that lesson already because Republicans stonewalling everything started in the 90s with Newt Gingrich. We had already had nearly 20 years of them pulling sketchy shit while the Democrats were like “I don’t think they can do that? Oh they did that, well I guess they can do that, but we won’t do that, because DECORUM!”
No offense, but if I could tell that was a dead end to try to work with Republicans by 2008 when I was nearly 30, then the guy who is capable enough to be President probably ought to understand that, too.
When he said “we need to look forward, not backward” in regard to war crimes, I began to worry we’d have someone worse than Dubya Bush someday and shocker I was right.
How old were you that year?
The adults were biting their nails every day.
The GOP was doing everything they could to stop him, and not a single one of them every gave an inch.
Meanwhile, Dems were wavering all the time.
You know that’s really dismissive to those of us who were clearly fucking adults when this was happening. You don’t have to act like “you must be a child to not see the world the way I do!” Doing that is what is fucking childish. Surprise, people who lived through the same events have different feelings on it.
Did no one read a fucking word of the article? Is everyone that desperate to miss the point and jerk off Obama? I thought we didn’t treat our guys like gods like Republicans do? Yet we’re not allowed to critique them? Fuck me, you need to grow the fuck up. Obama hasn’t even been directly involved in politics for a long time now, why do we need to jerk off his legacy?
Like I said, if you were paying attention to the news then you’d remember how tough the going was.
If youre going to critique, get the facts right.
The tough was going because they were too busy following procedure and decorum instead fighting tooth and nail for citizens.
He literally used the parliamentarian as an excuse, when the Republicans had already dispensed with following rules.
He could have steamrolled the parliamentarian and gotten the public option. A lot of us spend time thinking what could have been if Democrats hadn’t been so focused on decorum and gentleman handshakes and working across the aisle and instead rammed it down everyone’s throats like fucking GOP claims they did anyway.
Trump is literally president again because Biden was too focused in decorum and gentleman handshakes too. There wasn’t a good reason to make Merrick Garland AG, for example, but Garland got put in anyway.
They had 72 days of a filibuster-proof supermajority. They would still have a majority in both chambers until the mid-term elections in 2010 when Republicans took majority in the House but Democrats still had the majority in the Senate. But sure, they didn’t have majorities in congress and they certainly didn’t have a majority so big you couldn’t filibuster it for two and half months.
Thanks Obama!
LMBO! What do you expect from a right-wing genocide lite guy.
Dont forget to vote in Blue(MAGA) and attend some useless protests so you liberals can pretend to actually do something!
