xkcd #2875: 2024
xkcd #2875: 2024
Alt text:
It wasn't originally constitutionally required, but presidents who served two terms have traditionally followed George Washington's example and gotten false teeth.
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Imagine being alive from 2009 to 2017 and thinking to yourself "Wow, Obama did such a great job, I want that guy back here running things again."
God damn, I thought Randall Munroe was supposed to be smart.
I think it was more like the guy before him drug us into multiple, decades long wars - then the guy after him tried to overthrow our democracy and instill himself as president after losing an election. So having an 8 year break of semi-normalcy was refreshing.
No, tan suits and Dijon mustard are so much worse than either of those.
I think it was more like the guy before him drug us into multiple, decades long wars
We got into a shooting war in Syria under Obama. We overthrew the Libyan government with US-French joint airstrikes, too. We fostered relations with the fascist Modi regime in India and failed to secure any kind of lasting peace with Iran. We couldn't actually end the embargo of Cuba or even close down Gitmo. Instead we ended up ramping up police powers in the wake of the Baltimore and Ferguson riots.
Despite having a supermajority in the Senate, we never managed to get DC or Puerto Rico their statehoods... which is a shame because DC statehood alone could have kept Mitch McConnell out of the Senate majority position and flipped a host of federal judicial appointments including two in the SC. Extra important given that we lost the Voting Rights Act case under Obama's DOJ and a bunch of redistricting fights as well. That gave us a Republican House Majority despite those districts representing less than 45% of the total voting base.
Hell, one of the first things the Obama House, Senate, and Presidency did after a sweeping win in 2008 was.... to strip federal funds from ACORN!
Maybe some of those fuck-ups were what cost him the House, the Senate, the SCOTUS, and then the Presidency in the snowball of failure that lead up to 2016.
having an 8 year break of semi-normalcy was refreshing
Having an 8 year break of a smooth operator in office definitely blinded us to the decay of the republic that accelerated under his watch. But who did that ultimately benefit?
I guess it benefited our nation's budding crop of fascists.
Sorry for trying? The guy took a legitimate run at peace with Iran, normalizing relationships with Cuba, and closing Gitmo. The GOP found ready allies among Democratic senators to block it all. (Except the Iran deal which they just blew up the second they were in office again.)
The GOP blocked the aid that would have seen us take a Ukraine like stance to moderate rebels in Syria.
The Super majority in the Senate didn't even last a full year. They had it for six months. People think Obama should have shoved the entire progressive agenda through in six months but you forget Manchin and crew were part of that majority.
Finally, he didn't lose shit in 2016. He wasn't running because there's a term limit on presidents. It was Hillary Clinton and she shit the bed on campaigning.
Sorry for trying?
Trying what? When he took office in 2009, he had all the accumulated Unitary Executive authority accrued under Bush plus direct Treasury Ownership of the six largest banks in the country, plus a Senate supermajority and overwhelming House majority, plus the world's most powerful military.
What did he do with all this in his first two years? Bailouts for the richest of the rich and Mitt Romney's solution to insurance industry reform. No mortgage debt relief, despite naked criminal behavior by the banks his US Treasury Department then owned. No student debt relief. No emergency authorization to expand Medicaid and Medicare - something even dumb-dumb Trump happily waved through without Congressional approval by way of the Stafford Act. No immigration reform which he had the votes for but was afraid to pass without Lindsey Graham's blessing. No climate change bill despite the fact that it was John McCain's fucking bill, he just didn't want to pass it without McCain's official endorsement.
He did not try. He was notable for how much he didn't do, particularly relative to Bush before and Trump after, because he was afraid of looking bad on cable news shows. He was entirely fixated on his public image, rather than on the real social impact of the administration he was orchestrating.
The GOP blocked the aid
The GOP didn't block shit. They had no majorities anywhere in government for two full years.
The Super majority in the Senate didn’t even last a full year.
Donald Trump did more with a simple majority than Obama did with 60 votes. And when he lost that majority, he pulled every lever available to the executive branch. Trump was turning out executive orders as fast as his fat little fingers could sign them. Obama couldn't even be bothered to nominate a full slate of federal judges to fill Bush-Era vacancies.
Finally, he didn’t lose shit in 2016. He wasn’t running
He didn't try to campaign for Hillary in big swing midwestern states. Given how he was underwater on approval through most of his last year of office, maybe it wasn't even the worst move. But this was yet another instance in which he just couldn't be bothered to try.
He had the banks and the military? (We already tackled why a decorative supermajority doesn't equal progressive heaven.) So he should have what? Led a palace coup and ruled as a dictator?
And the GOP don't need a majority. Or have you not been paying attention? They can block anything they want with 40 seats.
You're looking at a president and expecting a king.
They can block anything they want with 40 seats.
Strange that the Democrats were never able to do the same under Trump or Bush.
You’re looking at a president and expecting a king.
I'm looking at an Obama and expecting him to exercise all the powers Congress invested in George Bush. I'm looking at a guy who was literally handed direct ownership of the entire financial system at the end of 2008 and choose to appoint a Fed Reserve hack to the Treasury who would hand it all back to the same bad actors that brought about the crash.
I'm expecting a President to behave like a President and not simply an employee of Wall Street.
Well that's a standard no president since Jimmy Carter meets. And the Democrats used minority filibusters all the time in the 2000's.
Well that’s a standard no president since Jimmy Carter meets.
Carter's Volcker Shock was an absolute give-away to Wall Street
And the Democrats used minority filibusters all the time in the 2000’s.
Democrats forced half as many cloture votes in 05/06, the last year Bush had a Senate majority, as Republicans invoked in 07/08.
Oh no half as many? So they did do it after all?
And dude are you really going to try and tell us the peanut farmer president was a bank man?
Carter was a nuclear technician with a 15 year long political career fixated on privatizing the state and national economy. He inherited a peanut farm from his dying father and kept the business afloat precisely because he understood how to obtain cheap lines of credit. Carter wasn't tilling soil in the 50s. He was a spreadsheets guy.
Donald Trump did more with a simple majority than Obama did with 60 votes.
And this is how I know you're talking out your ass. A pigeon playing chess may look like it's doing a lot, but it literally is just shitting on everything while knocking pieces over. Obama inherited a failing economy, turned it around and trump shat all over it. not the move the country needed. fuck that traitor and you for defending him
A pigeon playing chess may look like it’s doing a lot
You can place at least two of the biggest military conflagrations at the feet of that pigeon. Trump destabilized peace talks between Ukraine and Russia back in 2018, leading to border clashes and the eventual invasion in '21. And his decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem kicked off a wave of Israeli/Palestinian violence that brought us to October 7th. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
Obama inherited a failing economy
That he bequeathed to Trump eight years later. FFS, black wealth dropped 30% under the Obama presidency, primarily thanks to the robo-signing of foreclosures under his administration. He sided with WellsFargo and Bank of America over tens of millions of middle class homeowners and functionally bankrolled their illegal home seizures via TARP.
Trump destabilized peace talks <…> [and] kicked off a wave of <…> violence
And this is supposed to be a good thing, right?
That's been an amazing thing for the US arms industry and for western energy firms and financials.
That he bequeathed to Trump eight years later.
Trump inherited a growing economy. learn about economic momentum my guy.
... the data show a continuation of trends, not a dramatic shift. It suggests Trump didn’t build something new; rather he inherited a pretty good situation.
Trump inherited a growing economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015–2016_stock_market_selloff
Okay? You're referencing a GLOBAL event and attributing it to single person. If we're going down that path, I find it a strange that the stock market went to shit the same month Trump announced he was running for president [0] - Two can play the correlation is causation game. And even though the market eventually returned to something we might consider normal, it "... was still below the annualized returns of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama" [1].
That he bequeathed to Trump eight years later.
Okay? You’re referencing a GLOBAL event and attributing it to single person.
:-/
Well the presidents in my lifetime were Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2(illegally), Obama, Trump, and Biden.
Yeah he's the best of the lot. I would prefer FDR in some kind of undead emperor setup but sadly that's not available.
Yeah he’s the best of the lot.
I mean, "best" by what standard? He's a continuation of the Reagan tradition.
I would prefer FDR in some kind of undead emperor setup but sadly that’s not available.
FDR got where he was thanks to a large popular movement that his administration ultimately undermined and dismantled. The guy that delivered Harry Truman, J. Edgar Hoover, and Allen Dulles onto the American system was a compromise at best.
Fixating on Presidents as modern day messiah figures has been uniformly bad for American politics and social progress. And its illustrated by this latent desire for a Lich-King President, a shambling corpse propped up by hagiography and revisionist history, who we're taught to venerate as the fountain of progress rather than merely the man at the helm during a hurricane who didn't sink the ship.
These guys aren't prime movers, they're consequences of much larger and more sweeping social movements. I would love to be in a country that elects a guy like FDR, but I do not believe that magically making FDR president again would result in anything remotely like the policies we got under his original administration.
I agree with that. I was being somewhat flippant talking about a "Lich King president" (I was going for Warhammer 40k if that helps set the picture better)
Without movements we don't get shit. The rich have access by default. Everyone else has to make their access, typically with movements.
Younger, more energenic, possibly idealistic presidents might lead to a change of status quo.
So that's pretty much why not.
Fixating on Presidents as modern day messiah figures has been uniformly bad for American politics and social progress. And its illustrated by this latent desire for a Lich-King President, a shambling corpse propped up by hagiography and revisionist history, who we're taught to venerate as the fountain of progress rather than merely the man at the helm during a hurricane who didn't sink the ship.
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
Man, if only.
Obama did do a great job compared to everyone within 8 years on either side of him.
Obama did do a great job
If he'd done a great job, the Dems would have maintained their majorities and Hillary would have won the Presidency.
He did a shit job. He sold out to the big banks. He failed to implement democractic reforms and protect civil rights. He undermined public education, health care, and social welfare. He continued to funnel hundred of billions of dollars to military contractors, heightened tensions in Europe and the Middle East, and ultimately gave us the socio-economic conditions that made Trump a viable candidate for the Presidency.
But he talked good. So, for some reason, we overlook all of that.
He wasn't perfect, sure. But I think you're simultaneously giving him too much and too little credit.
Presidents are figureheads. They get blamed for a lot of trailing indicators they have little control over, and are limited by the particular congresses they have to deal with.
Recently, for example, Biden was pretty limited by the fact that any climate legislation has to get voted on by Joe Manchin.
Obama's policies were impacted by what he thought he could pass.
Look at healthcare, for example. Obama was 32 when universal healthcare blew up pretty spectacularly in Clinton's first year in office. Insurance companies, in particular, spent tens of millions on very successful FUD ad campaigns. Unions were against it, because they often negotiate for "cadillac plans". Much like how Trump moved on after 'repeal and replace' failed dramatically, Clinton did as well.
Obamacare had the advantage that it wasn't an existential threat to the insurance industry. Obamacare was deliberately something Obama thought he could successfully pass, while still being an incremental improvement. And, of course, it did actually pass.
Could Obama have passed Medicare for all instead, or would we have just seen a repeat of Clinton's failure? Honestly, it's impossible to know for sure.
He wasn’t perfect, sure.
He wasn't good.
Obama was 32 when universal healthcare blew up pretty spectacularly in Clinton’s first year in office.
The Clintons weren't advancing universal health care in '93. They advocated a network of regional private plans that would compete for membership under a single regulatory framework. They flatly rejected universal Medicaid expansion. Far from threatening private industry, it was designed as a means of guaranteeing poorer regional networks could thrive with state support (much in the same way Medicare Plan C and the privatized Veterans Care and the privatization of the USPS ultimately are just kick backs to local business owners).
One of the better aspects of the Obama plan was to simply up the qualified enrollment numbers of Medicaid. This was the only part of ACA that really worked. And it was only shoe-horned in to contain costs, as subsidized memberships in private plans had enormous administrative overhead that was normally covered by employers.
But, again, efforts to simply open up Medicaid enrollment to the general population was killed from within the Democratic Party. Even as written, the bill allowed individual states to block Medicaid expansion piecemeal. The private insurance industry had to be protected, both under Hillary's plan and under Obama's.
Could Obama have passed Medicare for all instead, or would we have just seen a repeat of Clinton’s failure?
If Obama and Clinton had supported Ned Lamont, the Democratic nominee for CT Senate, back when he won the primary in 2006, their odds certainly would have been better. But Obama and Clinton and their good friend Joe Lieberman had no intention of passing Medicare for All, because they were all - quite literally - heavily invested in the well being of the insurance industry.
Hillary wasn't likable. The DNC is to blame for pushing an unlikable, unpopular candidate. They'd rather lose with Hillary, than win with Bernie, so that's what they did. That is not new behavior for them. Plus trump resonated with a lot of fed up idiots, so he got votes. Thankfully he didn't get enough votes the second time around.
Hillary wasn’t likable.
She had an enormous base of support and a rabid following for decades. She's at least as likeable as Donald Trump.
The DNC is to blame for pushing an unlikable, unpopular candidate
The DNC does what the donors tell them. And Hillary commanded one of the most successful donor-bundling operations in the party's history. In no small part because so many people liked her.
They’d rather lose with Hillary, than win with Bernie
That's true. But Bernie also had a huge hurdle of likeability to overcome. He had at least as many dings on his score card, being an East Coast Jewish Man who once said nice things about Fidel Castro. Dude was DOA in Florida on that resume alone.
Where Hillary fucked up (and where Bernie had a lot of potential) was in the Midwest. And all that is thanks to NAFTA. The Democratic Party is still wrestling with the ghost of 1993 and Bill's decision to move ahead with NAFTA after campaigning against it. Obama fucked Hillary horribly when he pushed ahead with the TPP, which dredged up all those skeletons and gave everyone in the Midwest flash-backs to the de-industrialization of the prior decade.
Trump was able to campaign on "America First" against a Democratic Party that is far too in-bed with international business interests to say anything in defense of domestic labor. Bernie could have countered that, which is the main reason why he was the preferred candidate against Trump.
But then, four years later, Joe Biden takes the stage and makes all the same "pro-labor" noises that Bernie is making. Plus COVID. Plus liberals being too terrified of Trump to contemplate anyone but the safest of safe bets.
I'm all for hating on Obama, but Hillary lost it herself. Obama did a good enough job that Bernie would have won.
As someone that's been alive since Ford... Yeah, I'd love to have Obama back. I didn't agree with him all the time--or even a lot of the time--but he was reasonable and largely measured, and managed to work fairly effectively with a divided congress. Would I rather have someone like Jimmy Carter again? Sure. Would I much, much rather have another Obama than another Bush, Reagan, or--may the dark lord protect us--Trump? Absolutely.
(Am I pretending that Clinton didn't happen? Yes.)
(Am I pretending that Clinton didn’t happen? Yes.)
They were administrative repeats, minus the sex scandal.
Trade deals and bailouts and immigrant witch hunts and government shut downs and echoes of a prior war that they never managed to clean up. Both presidents focused themselves on the project of further privatization, with Clinton giving us HMOs and Obama delivering the ACA. Both presided over tech booms, which were promised as a panacea to poor wage growth. Both squandered their majorities and frittered away their executive authority, while the market economy swelled and the labor economy sagged. Both ushered in fascist televangelists because they couldn't improve the material conditions of their constituents.
One big difference was that Clinton enacted Don't Ask Don't Tell, while Obama was much friendlier in general to LGBTQ people and their rights. In my opinion, Obama was a better communicator, but that might be because he was speaking at a generally higher level and communicating policy and law rather than empathy. They had different approached to law, and I definitely preferred Obama's.
Unfortunately, under a fundamentally capitalist system, there's not a lot that can be done to make sure real wages grow for the workers, aside from a strong NLRB and having solid pro-union policies.
frittered away their executive authority
Here's an area I very, very strongly disagree on. I oppose a strong executive branch that can enact edict without oversight. I believe the gov't branches should largely be equal, and Obama went too far in uses of presidential power, which Trump then expanded on. That's an awful precedent. We revolted against Britain for a good reason, and I would prefer to not see a need for American Revolution Pt II.
Clinton enacted Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, while Obama was much friendlier in general to LGBTQ people
Clinton enacted DADT with the blessing of the liberal movement while Obama dragged his feet on gay marriage until long after the SCOTUS had ruled on Obergefell v Hodges. The Respect for Marriage Act wasn't even Obama's legislation. It was signed in 2022 under Biden.
Unfortunately, under a fundamentally capitalist system, there’s not a lot that can be done to make sure real wages grow for the workers
Sure there is. The US Federal Government is the largest employer in the country. If the President wants to raise wages, one of the most straightforward decisions he can make is to simply raise starting salaries for government workers. This instantly puts upward pressure on the national wage rate, makes federal jobs more desirable, and improves the economic conditions of millions of federal workers.
In fact, this is one of Obama's few direct actions. He signed an EO raising base pay for federal workers to $10.10 back in 2014. A meager improvement, particularly when national cost-of-living had long since exceeded what amounts to a $20k/year salary. But hey? Notably better than $7.25.
I oppose a strong executive branch that can enact edict without oversight.
That's cool. Your opinion doesn't matter. You have no control over the extent to which Presidents exercise their authority.
You might applaud Obama for spending eight years sitting on his hands and boo Trump for taking a direct and aggressive role in shaping national policy. But Obama's fecklessness put no constraint on his successor. No more than Clinton's limited Bush. No more than Hoover's limited FDR.
That’s an awful precedent.
Its a precedent that's been in effect under dozens of prior administrations. You govern the country with the tools you're given. Or you don't. But there's no reward for pulling a Calvin Coolidge or a Rutherford B. Hayes and sitting on the sidelines while your country circles the drain.
The only precedent you'll have set is one in which your party gets booted from office when the people you're selected to represent continue to suffer under conditions you failed to alleviate.
Its a precedent that’s been in effect under dozens of prior administrations. You govern the country with the tools you’re given. Or you don’t.
It's a precedent because presidents take power--not use the power they were given--and then the courts eventually say, yeah, okay, we guess that the constitution doesn't really apply here after all. Then it's precedent for the next president to take even more power, and repeat. I give it the thumbs down because even though it means that a good president can use that power to accomplish good things, it means that a shitty president can use it to do enormous amounts of damage in a very, very short period of time. Supporting that kind of trash means that you're handing the tools of your own demise to the people that want to tear down democracy. You can support that if you want; I won't.
In point of fact, Obama's restraint did put constraints on Trump. It meant that he had to go to court multiple times over things, and he lost on a lot. Like his Muslim ban; remember that? If Obama had greatly expanded executive power in the same way that Trump did, then Trump would have had far, far fewer court challenges to act as speed bumps.
It’s a precedent because presidents take power–not use the power they were given
Bush was given several literal blank checks during his two terms in office by a legislature that was more than happy to invest enormous power in the chief executive (so long as that executive was a Republican). The Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2007, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 were all on the books before Obama took office.
They each invested the Presidency with new powers via the national bureaucracy, enormous slush funds through which to shape economic activity, and regulatory authorities only vaguely defined by the legislature that the President's appointees could fine tune as they saw fit.
In point of fact, Obama’s restraint did put constraints on Trump. It meant that he had to go to court multiple times over things
Trump's trips to court were notable only in so far as they illustrated how toothless the modern judiciary is in the face of a Unitary Executive. Policies that failed to pass judicial muster were continued in defiance of court orders and over the objection of administrative bureaucracies - border wall funding and illegal incarceration of asylum seekers, kick-backs to private security firms and Homeland Security contractors, wildly illegal misuse of military assets in Iraq and Afghanistan and Eastern Europe and Latin America, leaking state secrets to foreign nationals, harassing and spying on minority groups and political opponents, using federal money for self-enrichment and as kick-backs to cronies, using federal money for campaigning in defiance of campaign finance laws - all ended up either being swept under the rug or continued under the incoming Biden Administration.
Obama did nothing to restrain Trump. In fact, Trump's team deliberately pushed the boundaries of what was already generously afforded them just to see how other branches would respond. And the response was, more often than not, to ratify his actions after the fact - either at the national level or via state policies in red states that sympathized with him.
Bush was given several literal blank checks during his two terms
And it was dumb then, too. Republicans--in general--are more authoritarian, and are happy to cede more power to an executive. Dems then use the power when they take the executive branch. Which is stupid, because it allows Republicans to keep expanding the power of the executive.
all ended up either being swept under the rug or continued under the incoming Biden Administration.
...Which is literally part of my fucking point. A strong executive and weak legislative branch is bad, and using the power instead of getting rid of it means that someone that's malicious has more tools at their disposal.
It's fast and easy to break things. It takes a long time to fix things once they're broken. A strong executive can break things far, far faster than a strong executive can fix them.
The ACA is the only reason I'm alive, so fuck off.
Your local medical system and its workers is the reason you're alive. You'd be just as alive under a Single Payer model or a fully public health care model. Its very possible you'd be alive without the ACA, just a lot broker.
Thanks for telling me what my life experiences are
You're welcome
The ACA is the only reason you pay thousands to insurance companies every year.
Oh yeah I forgot insurance didn't exist before 2008.
You fucking dumbass.
The ACA specifically prevented socialized medicine, as a hand out to insurance companies. In a lot of ways, it was the best possible deal for insurance companies. It essentially wrote into law that they must exist. If not for the ACA, we wouldn't all be paying thousands to insurance companies because they'd have been made illegal for all serious illnesses/injuries.