The whole premise of your post was an error. Raising the minimum wage isn't necessarily a left-wing idea. Marginal increases would be centrist. I don't believe that Obama asked for guns to be taken away. If he did I couldn't find it. Gun control is also a centrist idea depending on the specific measures.
So you think a President can do all of that on his own. Explains a lot actually of why Trump won and why people gravitate to certain candidates.
He had the supermajority for about 4-6 months where he could have gotten much more through then just Obamacare, like the min wage, like more stringent gun control laws, and many other things. I forgot about the dreamer's act, I do support that. He was moderate, I'm not saying I dislike him personally, or think he did a bad job as the president, but I fundamentally disagree with a number of his positions (like his drone bombing, free trade, etc), and believe he didn't do enough. Again, Obamacare is Romneycare, Obama could have implemented Medicare for all with his supermajority, but chose to implement a republican bill that makes private insurance companies very happy, with tens of millions of Americans uninsured. Yes, I do think it explains some of the reasons why Trump won. Too many people are hurting in this country, many are so desperate for someone to come in and make actual changes that benefit their living standards. They saw Obama, his yes we can slogan, all the wonderful things he campaigned on, yet he didn't do anything significant for them. At last, Trump walks in screaming that the reason things never change is because of corrupt politicians. That they are all liars, that he as an outsider will make real change and improvements, and the rust belt falls hook line and sinker.
We agree on a lot but I have to raise an objection here. There is no way in hell Obama and the congressional majority could have pased M4A. Obama's opening gambit was the public option, a government program for anyone who wanted in. That was crushed in a matter of weeks. Some might criticize him for caving too early, but the fact is: even a watered-down obamacare bill barely made it through the Senate by the skin of its teeth, and that was even with some parliamentary trickery thrown in. And even that watered-down Romneycare bill was decried as a communist takeover, the dems took a beating in 2010, and the political capital gained in '08 was already spent. I don't mean to defend everything Obama did, I objected heavily to the drone program and prosecution of whistleblowers and that's why I withheld my vote in 2012. But healthcare? It took moving mountains to even get a simple version of Romneycare pushed through.
I agree with you on almost everything you said. I wish Obama could have done more, and he probably could have. I don't think he could have gotten medicare for all, though it would have been nice to try. He had to win over the Democrats that were part of his super-majority. He wouldn't have had the 'blue-dog' Democrats if he'd tried that.
You guys are probably right, but someones going to need to clown the blue dogs out of their seats eventually. The fact that he had a supermajority but only passed RomneyCare is just so disappointing.
Yeah, I think if he'd gone in proposing medicare for all, he could have ended up with the public option. Instead he went in with what he thought he would pass and hoped everyone would be so willing to work with him because of how modest the ACA was. He compromised before being asked to compromise. So then they compromised his already compromised proposal.
i believe you are thinking of preident trump there. obama never called for anything this extreme and if he did the NRA would have directed their errand boy-republicans to start impeachment hearings.
That there are some on the Left who are claiming he was too Right and those in the Left saying he was too Left tells me he was good president.
