So there’s a general narrative about the last few years of American politics which a lot of liberals (including me) believe, which goes something like this:
-When Obama was elected, Republicans decided that they absolutely hated him a whole bunch, for a variety of reasons, and they were determined that his presidency would fail
-To accomplish this goal, they settled on a strategy of EXTREME obstructionism, in which they objected to and interfered with an unprecedented percentage of democratic appointments and policies… not because they actually disagreed with them, but just to keep anything at all from happening, all to make Obama look bad
So, we’ve had a lot of threads which have at one point basically come down to liberals claiming that this narrative is true, and conservatives disagreeing. Which is fair, people can disagree about things.
So, my question is… is there any way we can look at any facts or figures or records or anything to objectively determine how much truth there is, if any, to this narrative? What objectively countable statistics would look different depending on whether this narrative is true or not?
A few suggestions:
-more fillibusters than in previous equivalent time periods
-fewer laws passed in general
-more lockstep-block-voting by Republicans
One thing I think is at least worth discussing is the debt-ceiling-raising kerfuffle… which I believe was basically something that had never happened before, although of course there are different interpretations of what triggered it.
So, I’m hoping that this thread does NOT just degenerate into another round of he-said-she-said. What I’d really like to come out of this thread with is something objective to either support the belief that I already have, but make it something more substantial than just “I know this is happening because it’s obviously happening”, or else something that causes me to question what I thought was true.