Every Democratic campaign I’ve been old enough to understand could always be summed up with one sentence: “Vote for us or else the Republican will do evil things”. A completely negative message, nothing about why I SHOULD vote for them, just about why I should vote against the Republican.
There’s one exception. Obama 2008. This campaign was all about all the good things he was going to do, all the positive change that was going to happen. The word “Change” was so associated with his campaign, it was a meme for years. And Obama won by an absolute landslide.
Now, of course, Obama’s actual presidency, he didn’t do ANY of that, and instead, was just another war criminal, like every other president. But I do believe a big reason why libs deify him so much is his 2008 campaign, and I think that carried him to victory in 2012 as well. (Even though in 2012, they DID do a bit of that "vote for the Democrat or the Republican will do bad things, and if I was able to see that after they did that with Trump, but applied to fucking Mitt Romney, I would’ve laughed my ass off).
Now, after Obama was so successful with “change”, and the good stuff? We had the complete opposite. Nothing will fundamentally change.
Democrats really hate learning, not just from their mistakes, but from the stuff they did correctly.
Between his mandate, the financial crisis, and the level of class anger, he could have governed like a pink tide president or an FDR. Obviously that’s not who he was. There was a huge opportunity but no desire to act, quite the opposite.
FDR only enacted progressive reforms, because the alternative was a socialist revolution.
Yes, and Obama could have similarly enacted progressive reforms in service of the larger goal of rationalizing, stabilizing, and reinvigorating a system that was showing serious systemic flaws and signs of decline and decay. And like FDR he had the opportunity to do this in spite of opposition from Congress and the courts, to seize the historical moment and plow through these obstacles. But instead he did the bare minimum and kept the status quo intact at all costs. Because failing systems can only produce failed leaders.
In 1930s most Western capitalists felt that if they don’t do something, they would very soon meet Nicholas II in person, so they were mostly willing to do reforms. Now they are convinced that their dominance is unshakeable, so they don’t have any reasons to do anything.
