President Barack Obamaā¦class. Pure class.
Itās all about turnout now. Iām trying to be confident. I canāt shake a sense of foreboding though that enough people in America are hateful and ignorant enough to turn out in numbers greater than those who believe in the best of America.
He is not going to retire after the election. He and Michelle will still be fighting for us. Important work ahead to upend GOP gerrymandering.
I dunno. Seems like itās preaching to the choir. Which I suppose speaks to @imkmu3 's point about turnout.
People who try to measure Obamaās Presidency by comparing him to other presidents using standard metrics are missing a big part of the picture.
Hillaryās best surrogates are Michelle and Barack.
Trumpās best surrogates are Rudy and Newt.
If one measure of a candidate is the people willing to stand up for them, what more do you need to know?
Spot on! America, who she is and will ever hope to be, is on the ballot.
True, and the numbers are easy to make the case that voting matters. If you have a 2/1 majority in registered voters it looks like an easy win. But if only 50% of the majority votes and 90% of the minority votes, you have a horse race - right to the finish line.
To win you have to do more than convince the voters the other guy running is really an idiot (this election may be the exception). Too many voters are still looking for whatās āthe best of America.ā And theyāre right, as they (Millennials) havenāt experienced all those 'great āthingsā we talk about. Thatās the challenge.
What legacy is on the line?
Is it his decision to not prosecute the banksters who trashed the worldās economy?
Is it the kill list? That one seems particularly fitting for a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Affordable Care Act? Itās starting to go into a death spiral now.
Bombing Libya? Howās that country doing now?
How 'bout that pivot to Asia? That one worked so well that the President of the Philippines just decided to jump into bed with China.
Remember the sequester? He was willing to gut Social Security and Medicare, and the only reason it didnāt happen is because of the intransigence of the Republicans.
Now heās pimping for some really bad ātradeā deals, each worse than the one before. TPP, TTIP, TISAā¦at least heās setting himself up once heās out of office.
Thereās a whole lot less than meets the eye with Barack Obama. That shouldnāt be too much of a surprise. After all, his āsolutionā for every problem out there is better propaganda, um, I mean P.R. He gives a speech, members of Team Blue (and their cheerleaders) swoon, nothing happens.
Heās right, though. His legacy is on the line. Just not in the way that he thinks.
Wow! Great post. Where have you been for my time here at TPM?
Too many of what we call millennial voters have no idea what led to Al Gore losing. It was part Jeb!'s interference in FL and another part the third party candidate who shall remain nameless and of course the biased SCOTUS who wanted us to have an R prez. Iām concerned some of the millennials may be into casting a āprotestā vote, but it wonāt register as one to anybody and itās one less for HRC
Describe if you can what a McCain/Palin or Romney/Ryan administration wouldāve looked like and how either one would have brought political and economic stability to the country along with less warfare
Itās his decision to:
- Save the American automobile industry, its employees, and communities that depend on it.
- Nationalize FannieMae and FreddieMac for a $200 billion profit to taxpayers.
- Create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- Kill the Bush tax cuts for families earning more than $450,000.
- Halve unemployment.
- Avert 300,000 teacher layoffs.
- Require the fiduciary standard for retirement account brokers.
- Kick Wall Street out of student loans.
- Shut down for-profit diploma mills.
Itās:
- Shooting Bin Laden in the head.
- Banning torture.
- Killing Donāt-Ask-Donāt-Tell.
- Ending the Iraq War.
- Disarming Iran of nukes.
- Ridding Syria of chemicals weapons.
- Ending the military dictatorship in Burma.
- Normalizing relations with Cuba.
- Reducing GTMO detainees from 800 to 60.
- Signing the UN treaty banning Napalm.
Hardly a death spiral. Rather:
- Expanded healthcare to 18 million Americans.
- Elimination of the Pre-Existing-Condition exclusion.
- Elimination of copays for smoking cessation, contraception, cancer screening, and preventive care.
- Elimination of medical bankruptcies.
- Caps on insurance company profits.
- Extending Medicare solvency by 13 years.
- Empowering the FDA to regulate tobacco for the first time ever.
- Killing the Bush ban on stem-cell research.
Hereās what happened:
- His budgets upgraded 42,000 miles of road; 2,700 bridges; and 6,000 miles of rail.
- His economy lifted 13 million Americans out of poverty.
- He oversaw 70 straight months of private-sector job growth.
- He exempted from deportation 2 million DACA kids who, for all practical purposes, are Americans.
- He spared from deportation 3.7 million DAPA parents whose families otherwise would be torn apart.
- He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
- He barred federal contractors from discriminating against LGBTs.
- He secured marriage equality as a Constitutional right.
- He put an African-American woman and former slave on our currency.
- He expanded Pell Grants by $36 billion.
- He killed the Keystone XL pipeline.
- He reduced coal-fired power plants by one third.
- He doubled fuel-efficiency standards for cars.
- He invested $90 billion in renewables.
- He oversaw a 2,000% increase in solar energy installations.
- He approved 57 renewable projects on federal land (57 more than all previous Presidents combined).
- He oversaw a reduction in oil imports by 60%.
- He mandated a commercial A/C rule that singlehandedly reduces US energy use by 1%.
- He appointed Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to SCOTUS.
- He nominated Merrick Garland to replace Scalia on SCOTUS.
- He increased Democratic majorities, from one to nine, of the 13 federal appeals courts.
Complain all you want about what he didnāt do ā fair enough.
But donāt deny meaningful accomplishments, just because they fall short of all you wanted.
A whole lot of people with a whole lot of nothing got measurably better lives.
But itās so much easier to complain.
To say all he did was bail out Wall Street, kill Single Payer, and renege on GTMO.
Right?
(Sigh)
Itās a bit more complicated than thatā¦
[Apologies to those forced to read my distasteful rant.]
The silence is deafening.
I suppose you scared him off with facts.
Iād suggest you read the reply from @irasdad to your new friend posted about an hour after monkey provocateur posted his rant. From the tone of his past messages it seems the best course would be ignore everything he says.
You left out the part about Al Gore being a marginal candidate.
irasdad is one of my favorite posters - for a lot of reasons. Has been for a long time. In the past Iāve refuted item lists of Obama āaccomplishmentsā but it never made a difference. So I gave up as it really takes time. Posters like chammy and randy will bring out the Obama accomplishment list or simply overwhelm one with very long posts. Too much work to answer all the items or positions.
monkeypuzzle is correct in refuting the idea of an Obama legacy as if he belongs on Mtā¦ Rushmore. And I donāt agree with all of MPās opinions but his opinions at times are valid and necessary - like the one in discussion. But no one here support his list.