https://xkcd.com/2875/

Alt text:

It wasn’t originally constitutionally required, but presidents who served two terms have traditionally followed George Washington’s example and gotten false teeth.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1217·
    1 year ago

    I think it was more like the guy before him drug us into multiple, decades long wars

    We got into a shooting war in Syria under Obama. We overthrew the Libyan government with US-French joint airstrikes, too. We fostered relations with the fascist Modi regime in India and failed to secure any kind of lasting peace with Iran. We couldn’t actually end the embargo of Cuba or even close down Gitmo. Instead we ended up ramping up police powers in the wake of the Baltimore and Ferguson riots.

    Despite having a supermajority in the Senate, we never managed to get DC or Puerto Rico their statehoods… which is a shame because DC statehood alone could have kept Mitch McConnell out of the Senate majority position and flipped a host of federal judicial appointments including two in the SC. Extra important given that we lost the Voting Rights Act case under Obama’s DOJ and a bunch of redistricting fights as well. That gave us a Republican House Majority despite those districts representing less than 45% of the total voting base.

    Hell, one of the first things the Obama House, Senate, and Presidency did after a sweeping win in 2008 was… to strip federal funds from ACORN!

    Maybe some of those fuck-ups were what cost him the House, the Senate, the SCOTUS, and then the Presidency in the snowball of failure that lead up to 2016.

    having an 8 year break of semi-normalcy was refreshing

    Having an 8 year break of a smooth operator in office definitely blinded us to the decay of the republic that accelerated under his watch. But who did that ultimately benefit?

    I guess it benefited our nation’s budding crop of fascists.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
      192·
      1 year ago

      Sorry for trying? The guy took a legitimate run at peace with Iran, normalizing relationships with Cuba, and closing Gitmo. The GOP found ready allies among Democratic senators to block it all. (Except the Iran deal which they just blew up the second they were in office again.)

      The GOP blocked the aid that would have seen us take a Ukraine like stance to moderate rebels in Syria.

      The Super majority in the Senate didn’t even last a full year. They had it for six months. People think Obama should have shoved the entire progressive agenda through in six months but you forget Manchin and crew were part of that majority.

      Finally, he didn’t lose shit in 2016. He wasn’t running because there’s a term limit on presidents. It was Hillary Clinton and she shit the bed on campaigning.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        710·
        1 year ago

        Sorry for trying?

        Trying what? When he took office in 2009, he had all the accumulated Unitary Executive authority accrued under Bush plus direct Treasury Ownership of the six largest banks in the country, plus a Senate supermajority and overwhelming House majority, plus the world’s most powerful military.

        What did he do with all this in his first two years? Bailouts for the richest of the rich and Mitt Romney’s solution to insurance industry reform. No mortgage debt relief, despite naked criminal behavior by the banks his US Treasury Department then owned. No student debt relief. No emergency authorization to expand Medicaid and Medicare - something even dumb-dumb Trump happily waved through without Congressional approval by way of the Stafford Act. No immigration reform which he had the votes for but was afraid to pass without Lindsey Graham’s blessing. No climate change bill despite the fact that it was John McCain’s fucking bill, he just didn’t want to pass it without McCain’s official endorsement.

        He did not try. He was notable for how much he didn’t do, particularly relative to Bush before and Trump after, because he was afraid of looking bad on cable news shows. He was entirely fixated on his public image, rather than on the real social impact of the administration he was orchestrating.

        The GOP blocked the aid

        The GOP didn’t block shit. They had no majorities anywhere in government for two full years.

        The Super majority in the Senate didn’t even last a full year.

        Donald Trump did more with a simple majority than Obama did with 60 votes. And when he lost that majority, he pulled every lever available to the executive branch. Trump was turning out executive orders as fast as his fat little fingers could sign them. Obama couldn’t even be bothered to nominate a full slate of federal judges to fill Bush-Era vacancies.

        Finally, he didn’t lose shit in 2016. He wasn’t running

        He didn’t try to campaign for Hillary in big swing midwestern states. Given how he was underwater on approval through most of his last year of office, maybe it wasn’t even the worst move. But this was yet another instance in which he just couldn’t be bothered to try.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
          122·
          1 year ago

          He had the banks and the military? (We already tackled why a decorative supermajority doesn’t equal progressive heaven.) So he should have what? Led a palace coup and ruled as a dictator?

          And the GOP don’t need a majority. Or have you not been paying attention? They can block anything they want with 40 seats.

          You’re looking at a president and expecting a king.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
            32·
            1 year ago

            They can block anything they want with 40 seats.

            Strange that the Democrats were never able to do the same under Trump or Bush.

            You’re looking at a president and expecting a king.

            I’m looking at an Obama and expecting him to exercise all the powers Congress invested in George Bush. I’m looking at a guy who was literally handed direct ownership of the entire financial system at the end of 2008 and choose to appoint a Fed Reserve hack to the Treasury who would hand it all back to the same bad actors that brought about the crash.

            I’m expecting a President to behave like a President and not simply an employee of Wall Street.

            • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              Well that’s a standard no president since Jimmy Carter meets. And the Democrats used minority filibusters all the time in the 2000’s.

                • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  12·
                  1 year ago

                  Oh no half as many? So they did do it after all?

                  And dude are you really going to try and tell us the peanut farmer president was a bank man?

                  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    11·
                    1 year ago

                    Carter was a nuclear technician with a 15 year long political career fixated on privatizing the state and national economy. He inherited a peanut farm from his dying father and kept the business afloat precisely because he understood how to obtain cheap lines of credit. Carter wasn’t tilling soil in the 50s. He was a spreadsheets guy.

        • ᗪᗩᗰᑎ@lemmy.mlEnglish
          82·
          1 year ago

          Donald Trump did more with a simple majority than Obama did with 60 votes.

          And this is how I know you’re talking out your ass. A pigeon playing chess may look like it’s doing a lot, but it literally is just shitting on everything while knocking pieces over. Obama inherited a failing economy, turned it around and trump shat all over it. not the move the country needed. fuck that traitor and you for defending him