Chomsky on Obama: "No relevant change and not much hope."

[Pressure]

Bill Clinton is still popular too and so was Reagan. If popularity is what you’re basing success on then we aren’t even discussing the same thing. There are a lot of popular people that have questionable legacies. Americans love their heroes.

His legacy isn't questionable because he's popular. The majority of this country got what they expected out of Obama.

My critique on this is clear. The majority of Americans got what they wanted out of Obama:

Obama came into office with a 41 percent approval rating and left with a 59 percent approval rating

These types of criticisms aren't about legacy of Obama, but merely using Obama to run a leftist critique of capitalism.

No matter if it's well intended or just sanctimonious these critiques fail because they attempt to surmise that the people are unhappy with their leaders when the behavior of the electorate says otherwise.

 

[acri1]

While I have my fair share of issues with Obama and think he should've gone harder for a public option in his first two years, he spent 75% of his term with his hands tied due to unprecedented levels of congressional obstruction.

Bernie or Warren (or any Dem) will be in the same situation if we're being honest.


GOP will likely keep the Senate even if Trump loses and the Senate is going to vote party line 99.9% of the time.

 

[ORDER_66]

Obama did give you a tax cut

Not like Trump's!!! barely felt that shyt...

 

[Pressure]

Not like Trump's!!! barely felt that shyt...

Were you making less money during the recession?

 

[No1]

His legacy isn't questionable because he's popular. The majority of this country got what they expected out of Obama.

My critique on this is clear. The majority of Americans got what they wanted out of Obama:

Obama came into office with a 41 percent approval rating and left with a 59 percent approval rating

These types of criticisms aren't about legacy of Obama, but merely using Obama to run a leftist critique of capitalism.

No matter if it's well intended or just sanctimonious these critiques fail because they attempt to surmise that the people are unhappy with their leaders when the behavior of the electorate says otherwise.

The electorate’s behavior is anything but informed and rational and subject to framing. Obama’s approval rating is a product of him being a good guy and republican obstruction while he faced Great Depression part 2. That doesn’t mean most got what they expected out of him because people don’t think of politics in political science terms. The discussion of what has Obama done for black people was prevalent. Moreover, there is a difference between judging Obama in the context of other presidents which puts him somewhere in the top 10 and judging him based on what is best for America. Obama used left leaning language and appeals, and then his own personal brand so people projected things on to him. He then quickly moved entirely to the center and at times center right if not for Harry Reid being like wtf my nikka? So just as Clinton is viewed fondly based on his personal brand, but is critiqued on his policy while dodging the man, so will Obama. It is a necessary result of the nation moving left as millennials and generation z come to power.

 

[ORDER_66]

Were you making less money during the recession?

I was making the same amount I always did and that year DUE TO THE TAX CUTs I had to pay!!! remember if the rich past a certain amount is getting tax breaks guess who ends up paying their share?!?

 

[Berniewood Hogan]

 

[Oville]

Most disappointing thing about Obama was the stimulus package. No one even bring it up. Granted the Republicans forced him to spend 1/3 of it on tax breaks but what impact did the infastructure projects he promise actually have. Did most of them even take place? He was promising high speed rail and shyt spanning across cities. Did they even build those?

 

[storyteller]

I have Obama as pretty clearly the best president of my lifetime (Bush Sr. to present). I also consider him to have plenty of flaws worth discussing and critiquing as we move forward and try to improve policy. My two issues are:
1. The deification thing that some centrists do for the guy (not all of you, a small but vocal contingent that we might as well use Neera Tanden to symbolize). Knock it off, everyone has flaws worth critiquing so we can improve our strategies going forward.

2. It feels like people give him more flack than deserved on certain issues when a) the politics of the day were way more limiting in terms of what he could push through and b) the obstruction he faced was unprecedented so while it's easy to blame him for attempts at compromise, him being surprised at it is not an unforgivable miscalculation.

3. I truly believe that his legacy will be hard to measure thanks to Trump kamikaze'ing most of Obama's most forward thinking plays. The Iran deal and the overall foreign policy philosophy being the one that sticks out. I think we were just starting to get on a new track but it got derailed before fruition.

If we go back over basically everyone who has run this country, I'll always come out with more complaints than positives. But I think the BIG policies are the ones that we tend to think of and define presidents off of. For Obama that's the ACA and getting out of the recession. All circumstances considered, he did well with those even though I don't agree with every strategy/idea he applied. Now, revisiting Chomsky's quote though..."no relevant change" has a chance of being legit but that's impacted in large part because of who followed him and the Dem leadership's failure to defend his legacy more aggressively.

 

[Adeptus Astartes]

Obama came up advocating for single payer before he ran, didn't even fight for a public option and shut out single payer activists when it came time to draft legislation. He sucks

Edit: Lmao I just remembered how he let the Dakota Access Pipeline enforcers beat up the Standing Rock protestors and hose them with water in freezing weather. Clown shyt

Obama wanted a public option. He knew that shyt wouldn't pass because of red state Dems who feared losing their seats, so he settled for what we got. It's not perfect, but it worked for millions of people.

 

[wtfyomom]

Obama is good in terms of american presidents but all american presidents are trash so that isnt saying much, most people are not looking a nitty gritty politics, looking at every proposal, obama was talking lefty talk i dont care how you spin it. i also dont like poll numbers when half the country doesnt even vote and even out of the electorate they call like 100 old people on landlines that werent dissapointed cause theyre well off and seeing a nice personality and family on tv as president, same people that would prob say trump was doing a great job if he wasnt on twitter cause his tweets make them uncomfortable, if he was nicer in public theyd be like hey "great economy" chomsky is right 100 percent

 

[MoneyTron]

Obama is good in terms of american presidents but all american presidents are trash so that isnt saying much, most people are not looking a nitty gritty politics, looking at every proposal, obama was talking lefty talk i dont care how you spin it. i also dont like poll numbers when half the country doesnt even vote and even out of the electorate they call like 100 old people on landlines that werent dissapointed cause theyre well off and seeing a nice personality and family on tv as president, same people that would prob say trump was doing a great job if he wasnt on twitter cause his tweets make them uncomfortable, if he was nicer in public theyd be like hey "great economy" chomsky is right 100 percent

I don’t understand how people can say things like this and not explain what is a good president. Its one man balancing 100 information streams, the most powerful military in human history, and can in one breath effect the lives of billions of people.

What does a good president look like to you in the framework of American government and world politics?

 

[wtfyomom]

I don’t understand how people can say things like this and not explain what is a good president. Its one man balancing 100 information streams, the most powerful military in human history, and can in one breath effect the lives of billions of people.

What does a good president look like to you in the framework of American government and world politics?

every single one of them has at least one thing they did that is completely fukked up, with Obama, the drone strikes. with someone like FDR the internment camps, not extending the new deal to minorities etc, i dont buy into the job being so hard that i have to do fukked up war crimes and cut programs that end up ruining peoples lives cause you know i gotta make the powerful happy. nah, dont be president if youre gonna be a sell out, we need to start having better standards for our leaders

 

[MoneyTron]

every single one of them has at least one thing they did that is completely fukked up, with Obama, the drone strikes. with someone like FDR the internment camps, not extending the new deal to minorities etc, i dont buy into the job being so hard that i have to do fukked up war crimes and cut programs that end up ruining peoples lives cause you know i gotta make the powerful happy. nah, dont be president if youre gonna be a sell out, we need to start having better standards for our leaders

Its fine to have a high standards, but "not fukking up" is an unrealistic one even for the best leaders in any setting especially when that definition is different for 350 million different people residing here.

In any case, you still haven't defined what a good president is. You can't be everything to everyone. We can measure on generalities but pointing to specific policies to measure presidents' relative "greatness" will make everyone one of them "trash".

 

[afterlife2009]

NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option

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