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Obama says Trump deepened US divide in rush to ‘identify enemy’ after Charlie Kirk shooting
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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politics
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Obama's reluctance to criticize a fellow member of the Presidents club has really highlighted Obama's known flaws as a centrist Neo-Liberal leader, as well as the dangers of centrism in general.
Oh man the things I would do to have that man as president again.
The fundamental problem with Obama was that he took office in a transformative moment for the country, with an enormous public mandate to rewrite how our economy and our legal system functioned. The US Treasury owned 1/3rd of the private banking system outright.
There was an enormous demand for sweeping reforms in the health care, real estate, and education sectors. Union momentum was building for the first time in decades. DC Statehood was on the table. The SCOTUS was in play. A new era of civil rights legislation was possible. We had trillions going to a couple of stupid, pointless wars that we could claw back. The tech sector was ripe for economic growth in a period of surging unemployment in a way that would guarantee everyone more money for fewer working hours. Sky high gas prices made a Green New Deal a real possibility.
He fucking pooched it. Practically all of it. We got a few tepid financial regulations, a marginal expansion of Medicaid, billions in loan forgiveness on trillions in debt, and a pat on the head.
Now that window has fully slammed shut. A new window is open, but it's open to a future of fascist police violence, decimation of the administrative state, a permanent indentured servant class, apartheid, genocide, and a third world war. Trump isn't flinching. He's going for all of it and his party is throwing their full weight behind him.
Now that its the reactionary turn of the wheel and all the worst people are getting to make decisions, do I wish a non-fascist was in charge of the country? Yeah, okay, sure. But I also envy my conservative neighbors in that they appear to have a party that's putting all the shit they wrote down on paper into action. Project 2025 isn't just smoke blown up the assholes of the rub base. The modern GOP is here to deliver.
Maybe if Obama'd been less of a Truman and more of an FDR we wouldn't fucking be in this mess to begin with.
Even with FDR, he essentially gave the group that attempted a coupé/assassination a slap on the wrist rather than what they should have gotten. What does that have to do with this conversation? Any time some group or party does something heinous in this country they are given a pass to "maintain unity" or whatever going back to the civil war which just enables more of their bull shit.
I can understand if a person is against the death penalty for any reason. I'm mostly against it myself. However, at the barest minimum those who were part of the Confederacy should have been barred from holding public office of any kind or participating in anything that would influence public policy beyond maybe their right to vote
I don't believe Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers or David Koresh and the Branch Davidians were "given a pass", particularly after national news declared them public enemies.
Quite a few organizations and organizers get squashed hard. It's within the state's capacity. Trump seems to be demonstrating the degree to which these norms can be violated.
Well, they're long dead. I'm more despondent at Biden giving the J6 instigators a free pass.
That's literally what I am talking about. It's a pattern that goes back to before either of us were here, but that we feel and see as a result.
Obama lead us out the Great Recession with a pretty good economy by the time he handed the country over to Trump who spent four years trashing everything he had done.
He presided as we left the Great Recession, under a policy of Keynesianism both he and Bush Jr had embraced.
He didn't lead shit. He did what his handlers told him to do and looked pretty on TV.
The real economic vision of the Obama administration was not meaningfully distinct from Bush in '01 or Trump in '20. Bail out the plutocrats. Let debt collectors feast on everyone else.
We dipped back into recession in '14 and flirted with recession in '16. Trump took a bad situation and made it worse. But Obama never actually fixed anything.
There wasn't a recession in 2014 there was one quarter of contraction in the first quarter of 2014 but a recession is defined as a fall in GDP in two successive quarters.
There's a lot of valid criticisms here but you need to remember that he had to fight tooth and nail for everything he managed to do. The D majority in congress was a rounding error with DINOs on their side of the aisle. If he didn't concede constantly he wouldn't have accomplished anything. Even if he really did want to make the sweeping changes we all hoped he would, he didn't have the congressional mandate even if he had the popular one.
That's the line his voters are fed.
But when you've got a VP owned and operated by the insurance industry and Larry Summers authoring your Treasury policy, I'm more concerned with who he was fighting for.
That was a fact. WTF does his VP have to do with the fact that there was a 100% Republican block against his policies and he couldn't get anything passed unless he kowtowed and made concessions that destroyed everything he was trying to do? Biden didn't break any ties against him. Remember how Merrick Garland got confirmed to the supreme court? Oh right, they literally broke the rules to keep that from happening. This revisionist BS has to go. As far as Larry Summers is concerned, say what you will but the economy was much better when he left than when he was inaugurated. Or did you forget 2008 too.
This is classic "Democrats have to be perfect and do exactly what they promised and solve everything or let's go with Satan" rhetoric we keep hearing from the left and I'm tired of it.
Obama had a bigger advantage in 2009 than Trump has today.
Joe Biden being a creepy racist crook with deep ties to the insurance industry is why health reform failed.
He did what he could, and I'm tired of arguing with people like you.
https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/2012/09/09/when-obama-had-total-control/985146007/
I'd take W again over this shitstain
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
How about covid-19?
HW even.
I'd laugh at him for puking on another foreign dignitary
I'll ruin you like a Japanese banquet.
Yeah but he is a Nobel Peace Prize winner, right?