After (almost) 8 years of Obama...

The guy really acrewed the pooch in 2010 and just didn't help his party out all that much because he personally wasn't up for reelection. Sorry, but that is an amateur mistake and you would never have seen great presidents like FDR just fail to get out the vote for hos party even in an off year election. Obama just kind of left the congressmen on theor own when he should have been out campaigning no stop to help them. The lose on 2010 set the Republicans up to control redistricting and take control of congress where they could obstruct everything. That was a rookie mistake by Obama and it cost him the next six years of his Presidency.

Not sure if I agree with that analysis. That was the year of the Tea Party reaction to Obama's presidency. Redistricting is controlled by state legislatures. I'm not sure that his being more active in local elections would have helped.

How is that Obama's fault?!?

Yes, the tea party did extremely well that year but Obama gave very little time and support for endangered democratic senators and congressmen. Bush jr was a clown but he always gave a huge amount of time to help fund raise or support other party members. Obama gave some time but less than other presidents and so that was part of why the party lost and his next six years were very constrained because the Republicans controlled Congress. That was just short sighted and amateurish.

"He's also failed to do anything on guns." - Rick
Thanks for reminding me! Let me put that in the "why I like Obama" column on my list.
Gotta love that constitution.....thank you France, for blocking in the Brits at Yorktown.

Second part first: he impresses me as a sincerely decent, intelligent, and caring man.

As for the Presidency, I see it mostly as a missed opportunity. Many of us who voted for him were looking for a lot more on domestic policy: true universal healthcare, not the jerry rigged ACA; less partisanship, more compromise; stronger infrastructure investment based stimulus package; rolling back more of the Bush admin civil liberties excesses, etc. Unfortunately, he was tied down by an historically obstructive Congress, so he could not do as much as he might have wanted to achieve. But ultimately, he changed the conversation on health care, and that will likely be his lasting domestic contribution. ACA is a step on the path to the ultimate goal of single payer. This can be said of many of his other efforts, too. Sometimes shifting the conversation can prove to be significant in the end.

On foreign policy, I like what he has done regarding Iran and Cuba. Likewise, we are taking some good steps in the Pacific. Our response to Syria, ISIS, and global terror have been significant disappointments. But this is so mainly because they haven't worked. I'm not going to pretend any of us have the answer on how to fix those problems, but I do know that he doesn't either.

Chup is a serious Internet warrior -- I'd be shaking in my boots at this point.

Because he happened to be Presidenting While Black?

I doubt any of our other Presidents would've said "Treyvon could've been my son." But likely none of our other 42 Presidents have had to face the discrimination Obama almost certainly faced growing up, either....and he got it worse for being mixed race.

Yeah. I know. Be sure not to mention having a life or a family in passing. Otherwise you'll also incur his wrath.

You could argue that race relations were "better" before Lincoln than after him, in the sense of less race conflict, but that doesn't mean his administration made things worse.

Positive change is always resisted, sometimes violently. But conservative logic tells us two things: One, if you point out a problem, that means you caused it. Two, if you work toward change, you are responsible for any backlash, because gosh darnit, it would have been so much easier if you had just accepted the way things were.

Not sure that's quite what you meant to say . . .

I did forget about opening/normalizing relations with Cuba when I did my post in this thread. That was definitely a good move.

Indeed, it probably would have done even more harm. The 2010 election was a statement of motivated anger against the President. A lot of Democratic Congressmen in toss-up districts intentionally distanced themselves from him, not that it did them any good.

I think the problem for the voters was they got caught up in this seminal event and convinced themselves that he was going to be this dynamic force of change.

Which if you paid attention to the man himself wasn't going to be the case. He is a very smart, caring, and conciliatory man. And a very caution middle of the road politician.

Also, historically, Presidents are either domestic policy oriented or Foreign policy oriented. They are usually not both. Obama took it as his mandate to fix the economy, that was his priority, and more importantly, his interest.

Weren't the 2010 midterm elections not long after that huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that made a fair number of people in the Obama Admin. look bad?

Some even called it "Obama's Katrina" (as in Hurricane Katrina 2005) but of course that was hilarious overstatement.

Good guy, mediocre president, but I'd rather have 4 more years of Obama than 4 of Clinton or Trump. I'll expand later, but I'm late for lunch.

Why does anyone care if Obama's a nice guy? LBJ was arguably one of the most utterly repulsive men to ever become president but quite a few people celebrate him for Civil Rights Legislation and his social programs (not me of course but many do).

No. obviously not you.

Naturally you didn't bothered addressing the point about LBJ instead choosing to indulge your biases.

Agreed, he was clearly a centrist if you paid attention. I didn't mean to express the disappointment that some do, that he turned out not to be as liberal as they had imagined. I knew he was a centrist and wanted one, for that matter. But within that framework, he was not as effective as I'd have liked, something I mostly blame on Congress. And definitely agree, he was always more interested in domestic policy. We are in the unfortunate circumstance of needing strength in both areas. Some, like FDR have managed to do both, but most have not.

No I agree. Civil rights are horrible. Uppity negroes walking around like they own the place now.

UnAmerican.

It was a bit weird and shocking to see how many people became openly racist after Obama got the DNC nomination and it got worse after he got elected...
The weird part was that they thought it was ok to be openly racist...
And especially elected officials, like Republicans sending around e-mails with racist pictures of or about Obama...

That's because racism is what got Obama elected in the first place.

Every time you say something like that, you only point the finger at yourself as you say the word racism. There may be some people who voted for him only because he was black. But there were also some people who voted against him only because he was black. The vast majority of votes for Obama were the same people who would have voted for an otherwise identical but white candidate. That candidate, actually, would have won by an even larger share, so fuck off with this "novelty President" bullshit line you like to trot out.

That was mostly from Star Trek fans.

Clinton probably won't be too bad. Especially after the Dems get massacred in the 2018 midterms (almost a historic inevitability).

So you're voting Trump over Cliton, because...?

"May be some people who voted for him only because he was black" ?

I know several personally who voted for the novelty because he is black.

By any reasonable standard he was grossly unqualified to become president.

I'm rethinking whom I'm voting for. .

I know several people who didn't vote for him because he was black.

Like you!

Your anecdotes mean nothing. Prove that being black got him more votes than an otherwise identical white candidate would have received or shut the fuck up.