Opinion: Obama’s legacy hangs over the 2020 Democratic primaries
Former president Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally in 2018. By Paul Waldman Paul Waldman Opinion writer covering politics Email Bio Follow Opinion writer May 23 at 2:10 PM Whenever a party has an open presidential primary, its voters ask themselves some very fundamental questions about their identity, their history and their future.
To begin, let’s consider the criticisms many liberals make of Obama and his presidency. The first and perhaps most important is that Obama wasted valuable time and energy trying to win the support of Republicans for policies such as the Affordable Care Act.
I’d argue that the reason many Democrats are so ambivalent about Obama is the emotional journey he took them on, the one O’Rourke alludes to. It started with the 2008 campaign, an extraordinary enterprise that gave Democrats not just hope that Obama could win but also hope that the entirety of American politics could be transformed into something that, frankly, it has never been.
On reflection, part of the problem with the vision Obama began with was that it treated Republicans as almost nonexistent, yet their unceasing opposition and procedural radicalism ended up defining his presidency, culminating in their refusal to allow him to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat. Which is why every Democrat now seeking the presidency has to tell voters how his or her theory of political change accounts for the GOP.
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