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Little-Acorn
11-11-2016, 01:00 PM
Obama and his cohorts have managed to achieve something very rare in modern politics: Getting the American people so fed up with his party that they voted them out of office in waves not seen in living memory, and handing majorities and the White House to the Republicans in every major Federal body and state houses.

It could well be his most important achievement in his 8-year Presidency.

For that, the country owe him cordial thanks.

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http://nypost.com/2016/11/10/obamas-main-legacy-the-collapse-of-the-democratic-party/

Obama's main legacy: The collapse of the Democrat party

By Rich Lowry
November 10, 2016 | 10:47pm

Since before he was elected president, Obama put down as a marker the transformational example of Ronald Reagan. That entailed moving the political center of gravity of the country in his direction; winning re-election; and cementing his standing by securing a de facto third term for a Democratic successor.

As of 7 p.m. Tuesday, the Reagan standard looked to be in Obama’s grasp. His approval rating stood above 50 percent. He campaigned vigorously, and apparently effectively, in front of adoring crowds. The last round of public polling and the exit polls on Election Day showed Hillary Clinton getting over the top, and her victory seemed likely to precipitate an ugly, self-destructive Republican civil war.

By the wee hours of Wednesday, this scenario turned to ashes and Obama could only survey the wreckage of the Democratic Party, and by extension, his highest ambition.

Obama is a once-in-a-generation political athlete who will always be remembered as the nation’s first African-American president. But a goodly portion of what he has labored for over two terms could now wash out with the political tide.

His party has been devastated beneath him. It began in 2010, when Republicans took the House by winning 63 seats, the biggest pickup since 1948, and six seats in the Senate. In 2014, Republicans gained another 13 House seats and took control of the Senate. Democrats lost more than 900 state legislative seats in this period.

This was chalked up to the midterm effect, the product of a smaller, more Republican-leaning electorate in nonpresidential years. Well, on Tuesday night, the GOP won Senate races in blue states. It minimized losses in the House. It picked up more governorships, including in Vermont, and made striking gains in state legislatures from Kentucky to Connecticut.

All in a presidential year. The GOP controls the presidency, the US Senate and House, and roughly two-thirds of the country’s governorships and state legislatures. The Democrats are now, judging by the scorecard of major offices, the nation’s minority party.

What happened? From the beginning, Obama pushed the left-most plausible agenda without regard to political consequences. His signature initiative, ObamaCare, was forced through Congress despite its manifest unpopularity and with the crucial assistance of obvious falsehoods (i.e., that it would reduce premiums and people could keep their doctors).

When Obama’s initial legislative overreach cost him his congressional majorities, he proceeded with executive overreach, especially on environmental regulation and immigration. His attitude was that everyone had to get with his program and that if they didn’t, they were either stupid or spiteful. He believed less in the usual political arts of compromise and personal relationships than in the irresistible power of his own words.

Having made no real effort at party-building and after a series of disastrous midterms where his campaigning basically saved no one, he had no protégé to turn to in order to try to win his third term. The political bench was empty. He had to reach back to his vanquished rival, Hillary Clinton, whose inadequacies he had exposed in the 2008 primaries and who was almost comically ill-suited to energizing the Obama coalition.

Those voters were considered Obama’s enduring political contribution — an ever-growing bloc of minorities, millennials and the college-educated who would swamp older white voters and constitute an ideological ratchet, turning the country’s politics steadily to the left.

In its first big post-Obama test, the coalition failed. Now many of the president’s substantive achievements are under threat from a unified Republican government, especially ObamaCare, which is in a semi-crisis, and his vast number of unilateral actions. President Trump will pick up his own pen and phone.

President Obama’s party is lurching toward its own bloodletting after losing to perhaps the least likely presidential candidate in all of American history.

We now know that President Obama’s larger project has come a cropper. He is no Ronald Reagan, not even close.

Kathianne
11-11-2016, 01:14 PM
lI agree that Obama created the opportunity for Trump. First of all, he trashed him at the dinner, which seemed to seal the decision for him to run. I don't think there's a person in the US, including Obama, that does not now know that Trump gets even and then some.

More importantly, his opening from the start regarding, "I won, sit down," started the divisions. Then there was the unilateral handling of Obamacare, the corruption of spending and lack of accountability with the infrastructure plans. Then there was the racial divisions, also opening in the very early months-'beer summit,' then, 'Trayvon could have been my son.' The DOJ ignoring the New Black Panthers prosecutions; the IRS targeting conservative groups; the total pullout out of Iraq, leading to the rebuilding of troops there today; the lack of transparency in all aspects of government; it goes on and one and on. Executive orders creating new subgroups of illegal aliens; doing away with due process on campuses across the country by letter-didn't even bother with and EO on that one. Seriously, I'm getting a headache, on and on it went.

NightTrain
11-11-2016, 02:22 PM
lI agree that Obama created the opportunity for Trump. First of all, he trashed him at the dinner, which seemed to seal the decision for him to run. I don't think there's a person in the US, including Obama, that does not now know that Trump gets even and then some.

You know, I was unaware of that clip from 2011 when Obama and Seth Meyers ruthlessly mocked him to his face on National TV with a laughing, cheering crowd.

Watch Trump's reaction as he gets ruthlessly hammered - he is not amused.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZYuII4HrzE0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


This is the most perfect act of revenge I have ever witnessed.

red states rule
11-11-2016, 02:35 PM
That is one thing I can give Obama credit for. Hell the RNC Chairman and President Elect Trump should send Obama a thank you card

Kathianne
11-11-2016, 02:44 PM
You know, I was unaware of that clip from 2011 when Obama and Seth Meyers ruthlessly mocked him to his face on National TV with a laughing, cheering crowd.

Watch Trump's reaction as he gets ruthlessly hammered - he is not amused.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZYuII4HrzE0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>


This is the most perfect act of revenge I have ever witnessed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/i-sat-next-to-donald-trump-at-the-infamous-2011-white-house-correspondents-dinner/2016/04/27/5cf46b74-0bea-11e6-8ab8-9ad050f76d7d_story.html

NightTrain
11-11-2016, 02:44 PM
That is one thing I can give Obama credit for. Hell the RNC Chairman and President Elect Trump should send Obama a thank you card

At least there was ONE positive thing to come out of the last 8 miserable years.

red states rule
11-11-2016, 02:48 PM
You know, I was unaware of that clip from 2011 when Obama and Seth Meyers ruthlessly mocked him to his face on National TV with a laughing, cheering crowd.

Watch Trump's reaction as he gets ruthlessly hammered - he is not amused.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZYuII4HrzE0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>


This is the most perfect act of revenge I have ever witnessed.


And to think libs were running around on TV gleefully wanting to run against Trump

Reminds me of 1979 when Dems (including one named Chris Matthews) saying they wanted to run against Ronald Reagan

red states rule
11-12-2016, 07:09 AM
https://dohdeick6sqa6.cloudfront.net/screenshots/production/live-president-states/00@sm.png?t=2016-11-12T12:07:47.807Z





The decimation of the Democratic Party, visualized

There's a certain type of pedant who gets mad if you use the word "decimated" inaccurately, the accurate usage being that it refers to the culling of a tenth of something, hence the prefix deci- which, as we all know, is a Latin-born numeric reference blah blah blah pedants am i right

When I use the term "decimate" in reference to what's happened to the Democratic Party in the era of Barack Obama, I admit that I am using the word in a way that would annoy those same pedants. After all, the number of Democrats in Congress and in state leadership positions has dropped far more than 10 percent since 2008.
Chris Cillizza wrote about (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/09/the-remarkably-thin-democratic-bench-just-got-badly-exposed/) the sorry state of the Democratic bench after Tuesday, pointing out that a bad situation got much worse with the Donald Trump-driven failure of the party at the polls. Think of a political party like an Army. To have effective generals, you need to bring leaders up through the ranks. If everyone keeps getting killed off on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of any given November, you're not going to be able to win many battles. The Democrats gained two Senate seats -- in a year that it was long assumed they would regain control of the chamber.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/10/the-decimation-of-the-democratic-party-visualized/