There probably is a lesson in the fact that Obama shepherded the most left-wing piece of federal legislation since the Great Society, over opposition in and outside his own party, and is chiefly remembered by the left now as a do-nothing moderate.

I will never stop being salty about this Obama is plausibly a top-five president of all time!!

If nothing else, certainly one of no more than 10 presidents who can be classified as, on the whole, a political force for good.

Obama stabilized and did his best in the existing order, but I'm increasingly fond of Skowronek's model of Presidential political organizing principles. Obama was a pre-emptive or affiliated President in the Reagan era of politics as it was falling apart. We have yet (I hope) to get a reconstructor.

Yeah I don't think there's an argument against having him in the top ten

Idk about that. His foreign policy was middling and enabled some pretty lasting problems, chief among them an emboldened Russia; his rivals generally succeeded in smashing him in Congress and his response to them generally missed the mark on who his adversaries were.

His pursuit of bipartisanship was his (and our ruin). He kept extending an olive branch waiting for “the fever to break”. A total misread of the situation. The fact that Trump followed Obama and successfully shattered democracy is an indictment of Obama’s presidency.

I think Obama's biggest overall failure is that he was unable, after his first two years, to create the political conditions for the success of his ideas, and that failure contributed substantially to the conditions that allowed Trump's success.

Shorter: I think he was just OK.

Who do you have ahead of him? The competition is not very fierce, is the thing

Once you get past the top three, quality drops pretty quickly.

Eh, depends on how you're ranking, there's a decent few that have both huge pros and huge cons - LBJ being the obvious example.

Yes, LBJ vs. Obama is an interesting comp, I think you can argue it either way Who else, though?

Does JQA get bonus points for his SecState/Congressional work? I feel like that affects the ranking.

Uhhhh, I don't think so, no. President rankings are qua president. Otherwise you'd have to give Jimmy Carter credit for his general sainthood

Also personally I don't rank Washington in a top 3 with Lincoln and FDR, b/c I think a lot of his heroisation is Revolutionary War generalship rather than his presidency as such. Which is not something I necessarily disagree with, but by that logic Grant and Ike should be up there too.

He was actually a very very good president, he belongs in the top three. Union could've very easily fallen apart without his leadership.

Also, “quitting” was a really important precedent.

My high ranking of Washington is less to do with the generalship and more to do with stepping down after two terms and his work at the Constitutional Convention (obviously that’s pre-presidency, but you don’t have a Constitution without it).

I think Obama struggled against a lot of headwinds and could have absolutely rocked an easier moment in American history, and other presidents would’ve crashed hard in his, but unfortunately we can’t rank presidents on might-have-beens (also this mostly applies domestically)

I mean, no, but you can apply a degree of difficulty adjustment

Yeah and his should definitely be really high, for both personal and global factors

Still remember him sitting w Congressional leaders of both parties going over issues for hours, w live press access, in Blair House, w complete mastery

Abe, FDR, Washington, Truman, yeah he sneaks in

A lot of words to say you've never had to pay for a usless overpriced AETNA plan from the "open marketplace".

Wild how folks either are gaslighting or rewriting history (or are just ignorant) that happened barely a decade ago. The overwhelming majority of Democrats, and certainly Obama, never advocated for single-payer or a public option. It was considered non viable by the party.

The point here is that even in the Democrats' claim of the """"most impactful piece of legislation,""" the terms considered were only ever right-leaning.

Insurance companies have benefited the most from ACA.

Live look at one of the halfwits to blame

Between LBJ, Carter and Obama the lesson does seem to be that you should actually be a do-nothing moderate and spend the next 40 years building homes for a questionable charity

Obama also gave effective immunity to Wall St and the Bush admin for a decade of high crimes, shoveled trillions to oligarchs, and institutionalized most of W’s foreign policy. Passing Nixon’s healthcare plan was great but doesn’t make him a lefty on its own.

Every critique of Obama I have heard from media figures on the left are explicitly not about him being a do-nothing moderate.

FDR and LBJ and Obama are remembered for their achievements in promoting our health and well-being and for moving the United States toward a more decent society (They're remembered for other reasons ofc) I don't think the lesson for future leaders is to attempt nothing

Yes its because he did this in 2009 and he was president until 2016 Also he promised us it would have a public option!

I urge you to read the thread my post was a response to, which noted that Obama attempted to include a public option, which was killed by Joe Lieberman.

Why yes in politics rhetoric unfortunately is often more important than policy. Waiting for democrats to understand that.

Okay, but Barack Obama was a generationally gifted orator who literally gave a famous speech about the importance of political rhetoric in American history.

Yes, and he won by arguably historic margins and is generally still well liked. Would have been nice if a second dem followed the same route, but in fairness he did disband party building between elections that might have helped

That was really his greatest sin. I know it's really 50 parties in a trenchcoat and all but the hollowing out of the party during his tenure was such a political disaster, and it seems like he could have done more on this front considering he was a *community organizer*

I actually do agree with this point.

His *greatest* sin was handing over the Supreme Court. Second was making Romneycare the de facto Dem opening position in negotiations over healthcare reform. Behind it all was taking far too long to realize that the GOP had long ceased to be a loyal opposition with good-faith arguments.

When did he hand over the Supreme Court? Also, "Romneycare" was passed by Dem supermajorities, & Romney was merely resigned to it. He even vetoed a bunch of provisions, & Dems overrode him on nearly all of them.

It wasn't dissimilar to a plan in the 70s Dems balked at in hopes of passing UHC post-elxn, but elxn didn't go well, & it took until 2010 to try again. Regardless, it also wasn't even Obama's starting position. Lieberman wouldn't vote for a public option, so it was either remove it, or get nothing.

It’s possible that McConnell would still have won in the end if Obama had made the Garland nomination more of a public issue, asked the court to rule on “advise and consent”, or fought the issue in various other ways that were open to him. But he chose not to do any of those things.

I sometimes wonder how much of Gore's defeat at the ballot box but also meekly surrendering in Bush v. Gore was due to Lieberman's all-but-Republican political positioning

Lieberman kneecapped Gore on national TV prospect.org/politics/202...

people are rewriting Lieberman? Oh hell no

Revisionist history by those too young to have lived it and too cynical to Google

It's being fed to them by people who should know better.

People forget that Donald Trump was the President through much of the pandemic, so, yes, they no doubt forgot about this.

And in the House, a number of Dems were told by Pelosi they were there to do their jobs, not to keep their jobs, and they voted for the ACA knowing they'd lose their next elections - which they did.

I specifically hate Joe Lieberman for this reason alone and so should everyone else

They know, but they can't grab clout by telling complicated truths.

Some people just wanna be mad at Barack and not think about how a bill becomes a law.

People also forget that the response to the most left wing health policy to date was for the electorate to immediately obliterate the center left coalition and usher in a far right tea party movement. A public option would not change the fact that voters *hate* change and poor brown/black people.

Yes, and Dems in Congress knowingly walked the plank in voting for the ACA because they knew it was the right thing to do.

If the WH had opened negotiations with a position that wasn’t already a watered-down compromise, the public option would have *been* the compromise.

Yes because it was 16 years ago

Joe "Fucking" Lieberman was a mistake from the beginning. He was also a half-assed ally during Bush v. Gore. Connecticut's Joe Manchin.

It also led to my favorite Ezra Klein piece, where he (correctly!) accused Lieberman of being responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths

"Dems should have kicked him out" Dems did! He famously lost his primary and then won as an independent with GOP crossover help!

it's cool that there was a Senator who was basically just (D-Insurance Lobbyists)

And who supported the guy Obama beat.

Yes but the issue here was that Obama had as much of a mandate as any president since LBJ and rather than strongarm Baucus/Lieberman he stupidly decided to let Congress fuck it all up

We still have Representative Richard Neal.

I don't know how anyone doesn't see a Democrat who's big endorsements in their first Senate race came from William goddamn Buckley and his brother as anything other than a fifth columnist

well, towards the end it was just (I- Insurance Lobbyists)

Also I-Israel/I-Iran Regime Change

www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/...

Really brought a lot to the 2000 ticket, didn’t he.

Agent you forgetting someone... -This is my headcanon of her since she truly is a halfwit RE public option (also RE scheduling your dental appointments to not miss important Senate votes on Don't Ask Don't Tell)

There were "River Gods" in the Connecticut Valley in the colonial era And in the 20th and 21st centuries the insurance companies have been the rulers of the Connecticut Valley (schools important too but) Sen Jay Rockefeller (WV) wanted a public option, so did Robert Menendez (NJ) but Lieberman

p.s. I don't go along with everything Cass Sunstein publishes but I am glad he's out with an updated edition of >> direct.mit.edu/books/monogr...

the day Lieberman killed the public option was so bleak

Probably didn't help that Hartford is pretty much just a bunch of Insurance companies in a trench coat. (Actually don't know if that's also true of health, but lots of property and casualty companies are based there)

It is also true of health — Aetna and Cigna come to mind first.

Tallest building in Hartford has a giant "United Healthcare" sign on it.

Kerry/Lieberman would have been interesting, and probably a nightmare

like what exactly is the historical revisionism happening here www.commonwealthfund.org/publications...

Reading this boils the blood. What could have been possible... On the other hand, imagine if we didn't get what we have.

I told a Zoomer coworker about preexisting conditions and revisions to policies and he did not believe me. New generation has no idea how much better it is now.

I refuse to forget

I’ve had this argument before and been told that he could have gotten it in there over Lieberman’s objections if he’d made a stronger case for it earlier in the process, but given the actual vote margin I still think it’s just as likely the whole effort would have collapsed.

As it literally had for the same reason under Clinton a decade and a half earlier.

I remember one week of discourse around replacing the ACA with a Medicare for All type of bill because Lieberman didn’t reject it out of hand when a reporter asked him about it, only for him to do just that a few days later. Lieberman was never going to vote for anything better than what we got.

A big retcon that is a little crazy making if you were following the politics and discourse around it at the time.

Yeah. I mean I was/am unhappy that there was no public option, but the wheels were coming off that bill as it crossed the finish line and mainstream newspaper columnists were portraying it as literally satanic

The worst 9 months of Dems in Disarray in my lifetime

I didn’t follow politics very closely then but I remember following the votes on the radio on a road trip with my dad and being so nervous. And everybody (not Republican) was so elated when it passed you’d never guess it was according to some people apparently worse than nothing!!

I will never stop hating Joe Lieberman

Lol at the replies saying Lieberman could have been strongarmed into doing the right thing

They never knew.

The devil's probably in the details here, but Obama cut a deal with the hospitals (or PhRMA in other accounts) to ensure that a strong public option didn't make it through back in the summer of 2009. This is from August 13, well before the Lieberman public drama www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/h...

Was there any confirmation from the Obama White House about this, or just the word of lobbyists making a claim about their own understanding?

yes, almost every single person who yells about the flaws in Obamacare has no idea what the Dem votes actually looked like Lieberman! Nelson! Landrieu! what a shitshow

And yet.. people today take what was probably the single most progressive piece of legislation of the last 50 years and pretend that, because there was no public option, that it was nothing. The American left needs to understand that even centrist Dems move the football for them. Every time.

Drives me nuts. But then I remember that I’m old, and lots of the folks arguing that Obama totally could have passed Medicare For All are likely quite young and were probably toddlers back then. (Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t read up on it! But it’s more understandable.)

It’s not so much that they’re wrong. It’s that they’re smug about it.

Forget who I stole this from, but it was like having 10 Joe Manchins in the Senate. Only it was worse than that, because Joe Manchin was reliable on judicial nominations

Don’t forget Pryor from AR, Begich from AK…the fact that there was an Obamacare with that caucus is a testament to how fucked up pre-Obamacare insurance landscape was.

Never forget

A lot of peoole really underestimate how centrist (derogatory) the pre-Obama Democratic Party was

fact..I count at least 9 centrist at a min in that caucus.

I was sat next to my BIL when we all learned about it from the news and he recently acted like they just didn’t want to consider the public option.

can't forget what you never knew

Oh, they know. They just don’t care. It’s easier to add it to the list of things they don’t like about the Black guy.

I mean sometimes people do, but this was now almost 20 years ago and people online were frequently born around there.

But why do you think young leftists believe so hard in false things about the ACA legislative process? They aren't the ones making this stuff up, for the most part.

Fair. I forget that sometimes.

Obama should have gone on primetime tv singling him out and given out his home address If that didnt work he should have pulled all his mortgage applications and tax returns and directed the fbi to come through them

People forget what the times were like.

The main thing was the Medicare buy-in at 55 from Lieberman that he wasn't the 60th vote on! Ben Nelson was also against the public option!

And the genuinely 'fun' thing is literally three months before, he said he was in favor of it. www.latimes.com/archives/blo...

People also tend to forget that Obama more or less abandoned the ACA only for Pelosi to step up and rescue it. I'm no fan of hers, but it's more Pelosicare than Obamacare, at least in terms of who got it over the finish line.

People responding to this are funny because I remember a decent amount of Daily Kos (and other online venue) discourse with progressives complaining the Obama administration started of negotiating against themselves before republicans or Joe Lieberman's. This is more sharpened knives coming out.

Him and Max Baucus, I thought.

Not Ben Nelson?

He was as well (as I look at his Wikipedia entry) but he used his position to get extra Medicare money for Nebraska, which was derisively referred to as the "Cornhusker Kickback". Events conspired to move the bill to reconciliation, and with him no longer necessary, the kickback was deleted.

But Max Baucus of Montana was instrumental in removing a public option in early stages of the negotiation and writing, which he said later was a mistake.