edwardmurphy wrote:Byblos wrote:
Iran
Syria
Israel
Healthcare
Trade
Welfare state
Etc, etc, etc, etc ....
What about them?
Iran? He tried to bring them into the international community in hopes that it would have a moderating effect on their outlook and give them a reason not to try and build nuclear weapons. For some reason a lot of people freaked out about that, as if he also melted down our bombers, cruise missiles, and drones. He didn't though, so the unwritten clause in the deal was that we could still bomb the Hell out of them any time we got the urge, same as always. But apparently that was liberal and wrong. So what should he have done? What would a conservative have done?
Syria? Rather than acting unilaterally, like the dictator the Republicans pretended he was, Obama asked Congress to authorize military force. Congress gauged the national mood - overwhelmingly against military intervention - and said no. And just so were clear, the Democrats split. It was the Republicans who overwhelmingly rejected the use of force. So what should Obama have done? And what part of his actions were rooted in progressivism?
Israel? As far as I know he continued to give them huge gobs of money and weapons and guarantee their right to exist while pressuring them to be more reasonable in their dealings with the Palestinians. I never really understood what all the crying was about there.
You mention healthcare, but the reality is that the ACA is a Republican bill that was put through as a compromise between liberal and conservative Democrats. Progressives didn't want the ACA, they wanted single payer. They got behind it, because that's how our partisan system works, but they didn't like it.
Trade? What, international trade agreements and globalism? That's was a key component of the Republican platform for years. Right up until Trump won the nomination, in fact.
The welfare state? Ok, fine, Obama was a progressive, so yes, he cared about peoples' welfare and that was reflected in his policies. But according to the conservative punditry Obama was slightly to the right of Lenin and Marx. That's [nonsense]. As I said, he's a centrist Democrat. That puts him to the right of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and left of Joe Manchin.
So to be clear, I'm not saying Obama was a conservative, because that would be ridiculous. I'm saying that he was a mainstream Democrat and his politics were, generally speaking, a bit left of center.