Posted by: tungsten
Posted by: chupacabra
Obama made a foolish promise that he couldn't keep. The ACA is the best he could get in the political climate of the day. The Republicans have done everything in their power to destroy it, so it is what it is. They should have single payer.
Obama made a calculated promise that he never intended to keep. He didn't even allow single-payer reps at the table during discussions.
Progressive analyst Matt Stoller made that case in a well-documented Washington Post column on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, headlined “Democrats can’t win until they recognize how bad Obama’s financial policies were: He had opportunities to help the working class, and he passed them up.” Stoller wrote of the Obama administration enabling nine million home foreclosures and anti-consumer corporate mergers, including dangerous consolidation in health care, partly caused by Obamacare’s “lack of a public option for health coverage.” Noting that most new jobs in the Obama years were temporary or part-time, along with the decline in lifespans among whites, Stoller concluded: “When Democratic leaders don’t protect the people, the people get poorer, they get angry . . .”
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/lets-not-whitewash-or-mythologize-obama/
I don't remember him ever saying he would provide single-payer. The foolish promise was that they could keep their doctors. It is interesting that people claim we shouldn't whitewash Obama's record, but they should have never thought he was going to deliver a progressive agenda to begin with. The Democrats in Congress were not progressive and the president was known for pragmatism and trying to please all sides. The revision of history would be believing that people were clamoring for progressive policies when what they really wanted was a functioning government and to avoid another great depression.
I think he was a good president over those 8 years, but I never thought he was going to deliver sweeping progressive reform, even before they lost the Senate and McConnell put a stop to all governing.
Looking toward 2020 I definitely think this moment in history has the potential to move progressivism forward (ironically thanks to Trump) and the DNC should pull their heads out of their asses and see that Biden is not the future, but in the 2 party system, progressives need to understand that they have never had the numbers within the party to get their agenda moved forward. Hillary was the last candidate not because the DNC stifled Bernie, but because the party is just not as progressive as they want it to be. Most Americans wanted the status quo in 2008 after years of costly invasions and an economic meltdown. I still question what even president Bernie can do if elected because Congress holds so much of the actual power and they are still pretty old school.