Former president has given series of blistering speeches to help candidates in key races – and deployment has proved a hit with party’s progressive wing That could have been awkward. Barack Obama, campaigning for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, acknowledged that his fellow Democrat has criticised some aspects of the Obama presidency. “Yeah, Abdul didn’t agree with some things we wanted to do – that our administration was doing – when I was president,” he told a rally in Detroit. “You know who e…
In those 8 years he faced a Congress that, for most of his tenure, and especially after 2010, filibustered or refused to move on nearly everything to the left of neoliberal.
Democrats had a filibuster-proof Senate for about seven months, that’s the window the ACA came through, watered down to get the 60th vote they needed for it to pass
When the legislative window closed in 2010 (because in midterms Republicans won more seats), the record shifts to executive actions like; DACA, the Iran deal and the Paris Agreement because that was the lever he had.
Republicans used the filibuster at unprecedented rates to produce the appearance of failure, then campaigned on “he got nothing done.” McConnell was explicit that the goal was a one-term president.
Joe fucking Lieberman, Al Gore’s choice for VP.
Yet another reason (that being, getting Joe Lieberman out of the Senate and into a less important position) Bush v. Gore absolutely fucked us.
Strange but true.