The primary beneficiaries of ACA are those who previously lacked insurance. That would mostly be poorer people.
You should. After Obama, the GOP would be crazy, and hypocritical, to nominate someone with the same qualifications as Barack Obama. And the Democrats would be extremely happy to also be hypocritical and attack them as inexperienced.
No, historians don’t look at polling. And your analysis of Obama’s accomplishments is as inaccurate as your analysis of Obama’s election and re-election chances.
This ‘qualifications’ canard that you bring up again and again is just ridiculous. In 2012, Obama was infinitely more qualified to be President of the United States than everyone on earth except for four living people. And yet you still brought it up (and still bring it up, even as the list is down to two), again and again.
It just shows how unimportant ‘qualifications’ actually are. No one who hasn’t been president is ‘qualified’. All Presidents learn how to do it on the job. VPs who were closely involved with their Presidents probably have a bit less learning on the job, but even they have to figure it out as they go.
adaher, you’re too personally invested in the idea of Obama as a failed president (which you’ve admitted!) to provide any sort of reasonable objective analysis of him as a man or as a president. Everything you say about him is so obviously colored by your personal opinions of him, rather than any facts, that it just can’t be taken seriously.
I didn’t say they look at polling, only that polling and how history views a President correlate fairly reliably. Truman is an exception. He succeeded one of the great American Presidents due to his death and presided over very tough times and had to handle a lot of stuff that had no precedent in our history.
Obama succeeded one of the worst Presidents of all time and the public was willing to give him every benefit of the doubt. The public blamed Bush for the country’s situation up until recently. How many Presidents get 5-6 years to blame all problems on their predecessor? There isn’t a single challenge Obama has faced that other, better Presidents haven’t. Obama is not Truman. If he’s at 41% when he leaves office, it will be because the public’s judgement was as accurate as historians’ will be.
By that logic, anyone can do the job. It’s just not so. The qualifications that matter most, judging by the records of post-war Presidents, is management and leadership experience. Barack Obama is the only President in the post-war era to not have it. It shows. The only other Senator to be elected President in the post-war era was JFK, and he led men in the military.
You know what they teach in the military? Accountability. There is nothing in Obama’s experience that ever subjected him to accountability. Except for the legislature, which teaches how to avoid accountability. He is pretty good at that. He has you fooled.
But hey, I’m curious. If Obama was qualified to be President, then that means any Harvard grad who was in a state legislature is ready to be President. Who knew our country had so many people capable of running the federal government? Oh wait, Obama proved that a Harvard education and legislative experience isn’t enough. Plus he violated a cardinal rule of management: when your plate is already full, you don’t demand more to manage. He can’t manage the government’s existing functions, yet he’s always demanding that the legislature give him more to do. He just doesn’t know what he’s doing, and that alone proves it.
I think people like you on the Right tend to be a bit inconsistent with your criteria for “leadership”.
I’m still waiting for all those stories about Obama attacking Republicans.
Hell Obama attacking himself is as hilarious as anything out there!
Just look up anything Senator Obama said he would do as president then follow it with what he actually does.
This is not what I’ve said. Sure, qualifications matter. But your argument about qualifications is incoherent and inconsistent. It makes no sense, and you’re constantly changing it.
All politicians learn how to avoid accountability, and try to both take credit for good things and avoid blame for bad things, whether deserved or not. You’re describing every president ever.
No it doesn’t. Your argument, again, makes no sense at all.
Of course it’s not enough. Obama had and has far more than that. He also, of course, has more experience at being president than everyone on earth but 2 people.
This is complete nonsense. It makes no sense whatsoever. You’re just spouting Hannity talking points again. No one buys this shit but you.
There are many exceptions. Polling is volatile, and pretty much every President was in the 40s (or lower) at some point. It makes no sense to view “now” as special.
Every sentence after the first two is complete nonsense, and based on nothing factual.
You know as well as I do that if the ACA, as is or in a modified form (including a “graduation” to single-payer), is successful and popular, long term, Obama will be viewed as a good president at the very least. Your desperation to try and avoid this is obvious and pathetic.
Just to expand what I mean about qualifications mattering – the ‘bar’ has to be met by the public. Only the public determines whether this bar is met, and it’s usually met in the primaries. Once the bar is met, qualifications don’t matter much at all. What matters is the abilities of the president – abilities to put forward good ideas, and convince the public to agree (among others). Every president has to learn how to be president on the job.
You need to distinguish between the PR image that gets bandied about in the U.S. domestic media, and what the leaders of the world actually think. (You don’t really know what they’re thinking.) The problem is that Obama doesn’t bother to pose or present simplistic comic book images for the U.S. public. But if that’s what you want, you can always go read some more comic books.
This is easily explained. There were enough bad Republican Presidents to split the vote so Obama came out ahead.
By my count, there’s two bad GOP Presidents: GWB and Nixon. There are three bad Democratic Presidents: Obama, Carter, LBJ.
No, it’s that the GOP voters can focus better than the Democratic voters.
I agree, except I would subtract Obama, Carter, and LBJ from the list of bad Democratic presidents and add Reagan to the list of bad Republican presidents.
Fixate might be the more appropriate term.
Where’s Clinton as a bad Democratic President? I remember very well the vitriol directed at Clinton when he was president nearly on par with what I hear directed at Obama now. It’s funny how the right doesn’t have much bad to say about Clinton now other than Monicagate.
Please explain, where does the “right” show inconsistency in its criteria for “leadership”?
Please, do tell, how are American’s forgetting their own history?