It has become this, but early on he tried his damnedest to appeal and connect with Republicans in congress. The ACA could have been passed much more quickly if he hadn’t tried really, really hard to work with Republican Senators, but the party made a decision that working with Obama on anything big and positive was unacceptable.
I wish he had been more of a “conventional” Democrat from the beginning – he should have understood that the Republican party is broken and cannot be compromised with on anything significant.
There is nothing unconventional about trying to appeal to the other side. If anything, Obama’s approach was even more conventional than Clinton’s. He worked the health care insiders like the insurance companies and pharma companies so that there wouldn’t be so much corporate opposition. The Clintons were much more confrontational towards the health care industry.
In the present and very recent past that sort of attempt at an appeal to office-holders (not just voters) from the other party is unusual, IMO – things have changed and the parties are a lot less likely to try this now (and Obama’s failure at it probably continues this trend). But we’ve had this sort of discussion many times, so we can probably stop here.
But whether or not one chooses to attempt compromise is not “change” in any meaningful sense. It’s fairly normal practice.
What would not be normal would have been for Obama to say, “Yes, you might lose your health insurance, this is a major health care reform effort. There are always winners and losers.”
Yes, that would have been very abnormal (and probably political suicide). A non-suicidal but more accurate description than the administration’s official line might have been “some very, very few Americans might have a slightly more expensive or otherwise negative outcome as a result of this change, which will help millions of Americans – we have worked very hard to try and minimize these sorts of problems, and if they arise during and after implementation I will work hard to identify and fix them such that no one is harmed by the new legislation”.
There is nothing insurgent about Trump. He’s not “telling it like it is”–he’s putting on an act of “telling it like it is.” He’s a show. It’s reality TV, and nothing more. That’s been his whole livelihood since he failed in actual business: Putting on a show, projecting an image of himself, to sell his name so others could use it.
Trump is no anti-politician. He’s the ultimate bullshitting politician, and he’s pulled off the biggest scam in the country’s history by getting nominated–all just to get revenge for for his humiliation at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011.
How can you possibly believe this?
Right.
A news anchor in Ohio asked Pence how he would respond to an 11-year-old girl who said about Trump’s language toward women: “When I hear those words and look in the mirror they make me feel bad about myself.”
This is how Pence said he would respond to the 11-year-old girl:
[QUOTE=Pence]
Well, I would say to any one of my kids and any children in this country that Donald Trump and I are committed to a safer and more prosperous future for their family. The weak and feckless foreign policy that Hillary Clinton promises to continue has literally caused wider areas of the world to spin apart, the rise of terrorist threats that have inspired violence here at home, and we’ve seen an erosion of law and order in our streets. And we’ve seen opportunities and jobs evaporate and even leave Ohio and leave this country. I would say to any of our kids that if Donald Trump and I have the chance to serve in the White House, that we’re going to work every day for a stronger, safer and more prosperous America.
[/quote]
Really? That’s how you would respond to the 11-year-old girl? Every time a Trump “surrogate” opens their mouth they turn into mindless robots of PURE SPIN.