obama has had "heartland" support in 2008....and then got countered by unknown levels of resistance on all possible levels.
imho republicans should have made deals with obama .....now everyone is pissed as hell.
no president should ever again meet this level of obstructionism....i am somehow relieved that democrats are too weak right now to be a good scapegoat for trump.
the people are going to feel his agenda hard and good.
A lot of the Congressional Democratic majority were built on Blue Dogs. In hindsight, not the best foundation for passing a substantive Democratic majority. I imagine that won't be a problem next time but still.
Well, the biggest problem was the Senate. Dems had 60 votes there for about 8 months in 2009 and early 2010. Obama and Reid should have threatened to throw Lieberman out of the caucus and set up a recall election in Connecticut if he didn't support the healthcare bill with the public option.
Wouldn't have cleared the Democratic House. The Democratic Party was trying to pass an agenda in which they assumed realignment had happened, not a temporary check to fix the country's problems. Lieberman wasn't the only problem. If you think I'm exaggerating, Daily Kos ran an article in late 2008 when they called Obama a realigning President and the Reagan era over.
ObamaCare passed like by 220-212 or something in the House. A public option would've been tough on top of everything else (I can hear the screams in the 2010 town halls: "you MADE a government corporation to offer healthcare?!")
It's a testament to Obama's legacy that he got what he did through despite the political restrictions he faced. That's why the GOP was so scared of Obama and fought him as hard they did. They figured that if he succeeded, they were out of power in a generation. Obama was understood to be a very important figure. I particularly hated Obama as a Republican, because I understood his relevance to the future as a figure that would presage a new majority.
