Obama's reputation among Democrats (at least one the forum) actually tanked much faster than Bubba within his own party after leaving office.
A few years ago I thought Obama would be the Democrats' Reagan. Maybe Biden will be seen as such, at least if he wins reelection.
The issue with the Obama as the Democratic Reagan comparison was :
- Obama was no where near as transformative policy wise as Reagan . Reagan pretty much created an entirely new economic consensus that governed the US until at least 2008 and arguably through 2016(The Neoliberal one ). Obama really doesn’t compare here at all and this is a huge part of Reagan’s legacy
- Reagan left the US on an upswing and as the sole super power which was a very different place than the US was in 1980. Obama on the other hand while he did manage to slow down the US decline of the 2000s , did not really reverse that at all and left a world where Russia and China had far more relative power than it did in 2008.
- Bush easily won in 1988 and thus was able to cement Reagan’s legacy . Hillary not only failed to win but lost to someone like Donald Trump and congress was firmly in the hands of not only the GOP but the Speaker was Paul Ryan who was pretty ideologically to the right .
- Much of Obama’s legacy did get torn up In the first two years of the Trump presidency: Dodd Frank was weakened , the ACA Individual Mandate was Eliminated , we left the Paris climate accords , Obama’s policies towards Iran/Cuba were overturned. Biden outside of reinstating DACA has really not been able to bring back the parts of Obama’s legacy that Trump eliminated in those first two years
So all that is left of Obama = Dem Reagan is that both were very charismatic and once in a generation candidates but this applies to Bill Clinton as well and nobody calls him the Dem Reagan
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