So let's go over Obama's presidency

so happy the media pushed that as hard as they did. the salt has been epic

His campaign was literally "I'm not Bush, I'm the token smart minority you see in your Hollywood movies, isn't amazing a minority can rise to power in this evil cis white nation." On policy he ran on a standard DNC welfare state platform, there was nothing populist about it.

I think that's actually mostly a matter of "actually bothered to fill out the deportation paperwork instead of just sticking people on a plane without any record of it" rather than because he actually upped the number of people getting kicked out of the country.

I don't get all the hate. He's a standard bourgeois Democrat. It could be worse. If not for Trump we could have been looking and President Ted Cruz right about now.

when will this meme die

Would you say that would have been better or worst than Trump?
In terms of crazy policies.

Uh. He was the lone resistance against the warhawks. Cooperated with Russia instead of invading during the chemical weapons issue. He saved the most hopeful revolution of our time in the ruins of Kobane. And gambled US relations with Turkey over supporting Rojava. Granted its limited and in selfinterest but its the best choice he could do in Syria.

So biji Obama in some regard.

that's because the american public wasn't in favour of another invasion. Otherwise that would had happened.

That's not progressivism.

I never could figure that shit out to be honest. When I heard the media go on about what a "great orator" Obama was I felt like everyone was taking fucking crazy pills.

He just did a lot of "pick them up at the border and drop them on the other side" it creates a lot of paperwork but lowers actually immigration by 0%

Obama does have amazing charisma– he even managed to restore U.S. credibility internationally just by the power of pure bullshit. Like yeah, he did say uh a lot, and he really did over rely on teleprompters, but he talked like Dave Chappell doing a white person voice and his rhetoric had always been aspirational and cool. It helps that the media fucking loved him and they themselves thought he was a "scandal free president" despite shit like fast and furious.

Please don't forget the expansion of the surveillance state under this fucker. He even signed in new powers just before transitioning power over to an even bigger piece of shit.

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Also don't forget the cunt pushed for CISPA and SOPA

Seriously he's an awful person, yet for so many he will be remembered as an amazing and perfect guy.

This is the most mysterious chapter of Obama's presidency. At the point when Manning made his leaks, the administration was actually riding pretty high, and in spite of extremely favorable public opinion at home and abroad toward Manning, he was treated as a criminal instead of a whistleblower and hero. Further, every step away from the highly unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was greeted with praise, yet Obama doubled down on supporting them in principle, even as the Arab Spring caused in part by Manning's leaks caused every supposed justification for such wars to crumble. Each ill-advised and unnecessary reaction caused Obama's popularity to drop further.

This lesson was left totally unheeded when, later, Snowden's leaks hit much closer to home, and Obama responded by attacking Snowden even more fiercely than Manning, and becoming more beligerant than ever internationally.

What's especially strange about this, is Obama wouldn't have had to make any practical concessions, just give Assange, Manning, Snowden, et al. commendations and throw some CIA/NSA/FBI scapegoats into retirement. Instead, he set about attempting to defend something completely opposed to both his voting base, and his campaign rhetoric, in exchange for supporting political factions that are nominally opposed to him on every other issue, and completely destroying his administration's political popularity.

He had everything to gain and nothing to lose by supporting the leakers.

He was supposedly against Libyan intervention until Hilary pushed for it. But then goes to show his lack of backbone

He is indeed a cool cat, like when he caught that fly, or that time when he was a relatively well spoken, liberal, black man who became president just after liberals were horrified by a president because he looked kinda stupid.

He is sandwhiched by Trump and Bush, liberal historians will somehow manage to make him look like a modern FDR

youtube.com/watch?v=ER0wkPWykNE

people are already nostalgic for this neo liberal

No they won't. Don't worry because one day history will give us reason and will expose Obama as the cunt he was.

Then he'd have had to acknowledge that the US and him ever did anything wrong, and that the power of the state isn't always legitimate

well that's very dialectical of you ,but I have my doubts

Trump'll just do whatever his people tell him, he's easily manipulated and doesn't have any real convictions. Cruz is the same, except he's a huge theocrat which would make him decidedly worse, but Trump emboldens fascists. Trump overall has a worse effect on US politics but his actual policies will be marginally less evil in certain areas.

Actually I imagine people'll think of him like republicans do Reagan. Republicans will do some revisionism and pretend that they disagreed with, but respected the same way a few do with Bill and democrats will laud him as the golden age of the party, canidates that the party like will be described as the "next obama" and ones that don't will be framed as a betrayal.

I'm not looking forward to it.

Reagan faced incredibly weak opposition in the face of the New Deal coalition's collapse, and while neither the economy nor military involvement really exploded nor collapsed, the Reagan (and Bush I) period was generally acknowledged as extremely unstable and rocky.

Bill Clinton was ultra-popular throughout both terms, and well after. Also, there weren't any significant economic disruptions or wars, under his watch or inherited.

By contrast, Obama won largely on inertia from an extremely divisive predecessor whose popularity rotted away over his second term.

If I were to name a better comparison for Obama's historical legacy, it would be Carter: Middle-of-the-road, succeeded on a "not my predecessor" platform, failed to fix practically anything he inherited, perceived as more pathetic than actually malevolent.

Jimmy was the one who talked of "human rights,"
Human rights for everybody, ha-ha-ha,
He was opposed to dictatorships and torture,
That's why he loved Suharto and the Shah!

But Obama is super popular right now compared to other presidents at the end of their terms. His approval ratings right now are in the 50s at a time when American opinion should be souring on the outgoing president.
The democrats are going to try and turn Obama into a saint, blaming everything that happened during his term on republican opposition and rewriting the last eight years to pretend he was some progressive warrior instead of George Bush in Blackface.

I had no idea Obama's approval ratings held up so well, especially among Democrats. I'm not sure if this is fanatical partisanship or apathetic dismissal toward introspection, but these stats are ridiculous.

They've got a seven year head start on this.
"No, he only made the central focus of his term passing the most horrendously corporatist legislation in modern history under the guise of "healthcare reform" because the Republicans were obstructing him! That's it! Even when he had a supermajority! Those damn Republicans!"
"He only vastly expanded criminal overseas wars of aggression, arbitrary detention and the surveillance state because the Republicans were obstructing him! So what if those have nothing whatsoever to do with the legislative branch, per any 8th grade civics instruction, it's the congressional Republicans that're to blame!"
"See? SEE? The Republicans SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT that one time! For, like, two weeks! I told you it was the Republicans!"

And now we get to hear all about how everything that isn't part of the pre-approved narrative of the six colluding companies that OWN the news is actually a Russian disinformation campaign, somehow run by the Republicans. Oh, and how they used that to "steal" the election from Mrs. Wall Street, who as we all know everybody loves and supports as their personal progressive messiah and couldn't possibly take issue with over her similarity to Obama's line because Obama literally did nothing wrong, except for when he clearly did, but that was actually the Republicans. You racist woman hater Bernie bros, you.

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It's stable for interesting reasons. He entered office with one of the lowest republican approval ratings ever (as in, ever, not just entering office) and it actually went down from there. The nation no longer responded as a whole, going up or down as things became better or worse. It just started with a massive gulf that never closed.