Barack Obama
Related: About this forum5 Obama Accomplishments & Successes Republicans Have To Pretend Never Happened
....1. Proved trickle-down economics are wrong, again
You dont hear it mentioned often enough, but 2014 was the best year of job creation in this century. This is a key point, because its the first full year in which Obamas economic policies really took hold. Most of the Bush tax breaks on the rich ended in 2013. And in 2014, new taxes on the wealthy and corporations kicked in to help 16 million Americans gain health insurance. The result was a job market like we havent seen since the90s. As they did in 1993, Republicans claimed that asking the rich to pay a bit more would destroy the economy. So, of course, the opposite happened. Its almost as if some tax hikes on the wealthy are good for the economy! But if Republicans admitted that, theyd have to give up their entire reason for existing, which is to comfort the most comfortable.
2. Proved we can expand health insurance coverage and shrink the deficit.
Americas long-term debt problems are largely built on conservatives unwillingness to do what every other advanced nation in the world does insure everyone. As a result, we pay more and get worse results than almost every industrialized country in the world. Obamacare has shown that we can increase coverage dramatically while cutting more than $600 billion from long-term debt projections. Republicans have finally gotten honest in their new budget and admitted that their alternative to Obamacare is
nothing. Theyve got nothing because Obamacare was their alternative, and every prediction theyve made about it has been wrong. Health spending is at a 50-year low, businesses arent dumping employees coverage, hospitals are performing better, and policy cancelations were likely lower than they were before the law. Meanwhile, Obama has been even more successful at shrinking the deficit as a percentage of GDP than even Bill Clinton.
3. Proved that the government can kick-start a clean-energy revolution.
When it comes to fighting climate change, President Obama has done more than anyone on Earth. Beyond the regulations he set in his first term, which are quickly reducing our dependency on dirty energy, the stimulus launched the clean-energy technological revolution this nation needed. Republicans started calling the stimulus failed before it even became law. And that kind of message discipline plus half a billion dollars in ads that smeared the bill scared Democrats from bragging about it. But now that weve experienced the first year of economic growth where carbon emissions didnt increase in 40 years, maybe they should.
4. Proved we can regulate Wall Street without killing the stock market.
Good news! Bankers are complaining about being regulated too much. Despite this over-regulation, were seeing constant stock market records. Meanwhile, the memory of the costs of under-regulation 8 million jobs and trillions in wealth continues to fade. Democrats have become newly proud of the Dodd-Frank law now that they see how desperate Republicans are to gut it. The success in keeping the economic engine of the rich purring should not dissuade those on the left. Instead, they should continue to fight against the persistent dangers to our economy that come from ridiculous executive compensation schemes, stock buybacks, and high-frequency trading.
5. Proved that we should give diplomacy a chance.
The Bush administration left America facing a newly nuclear-armed North Korea, an Iran building nuclear centrifuges, and a wrecked Iraq, run by a propped-up sectarian strongman with no interest in reconciliation. Democrats were likely naive in assuming this Tower of Babel of foreign policy disasters could be kept from crumbling. The Obama administrations effort to re-engage the world may seem foolhardy now but what was the alternative? More confrontational Republican alternatives would have guaranteed nothing but more American lives lost. Syria is a disaster. Libya proved that regime change is never simple. Putin is emboldened or frantically flailing, depending on your point of view. But as a result of re-engagement with our allies and a Medvedev-led Russia, sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table. Were closer than ever to a nuclear deal that could prevent another, still more disastrous war. And even if it fails, at least we tried not to repeat the catastrophes of the past.
Despite these successes, Republicans have to see Obama as a floundering, economy-shrinking, deficit-creating failure, or risk questioning their failed worldview....
http://www.nationalmemo.com/5-obama-accomplishments-and-successes-republicans-have-to-pretend-never-happened/ via National Memo

Iliyah
(25,111 posts)AllFieldsRequired
(489 posts)like W, for example, a genius and world class negotiator and diplomat.
He is a world class negotiator and diplomat period.
KeepItReal
(7,770 posts)I had a RWer try to debate this even happened. I kid you not.
Cha
(310,463 posts)DeepModem Mom
(38,402 posts)Cha
(310,463 posts)thank you!
1. Proved trickle-down economics are wrong, again
2. Proved we can expand health insurance coverage and shrink the deficit.
3. Proved that the government can kick-start a clean-energy revolution.
4. Proved we can regulate Wall Street without killing the stock market.
5. Proved that we should give diplomacy a chance.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/5-obama-accomplishments-and-successes-republicans-have-to-pretend-never-happened/
Poor repbubs.. President Obama is their worst nightmare!
rpannier
(24,707 posts)Proved Republicans are full of sh*t
Hotler
(13,070 posts)he has been mediocre at best. Wall St. still walking around free. War criminals still walking around free. Single payer health care, not an ounce of fight. His push for TTP. My opinion.
JackInGreen
(2,975 posts)While not having to pull back the curtains sometimes, don't we? We KNOW what's back there and it isn't great, a contained mess 8 years in awkward and stymied fixing full of errors and oversites and dRama of every painful stripe.
But we can enjoy the good things, can't we? Just now and then?
FSogol
(47,339 posts)Kath1
(4,309 posts)His accomplishments are astonishing considering he took office after the Bush disaster!