#ObamaSupporters #2008Election #2012Election #PresidentialLegacy #10YearsLater
Hey there, fellow Obama supporters from either the 2008 or 2012 election! Can you believe it’s been over 10 years since Barack Obama took office? Let’s dive into how our views on him may have evolved over the years.
### Emotional Response 😍🇺🇸
As an Obama supporter myself, I can say that my admiration for him has only grown stronger with time. Here are some common sentiments shared by many of us:
– **Gratitude**: Many of us are still grateful for the hope and optimism he brought to the country during his presidency.
– **Inspiration**: His charisma, intelligence, and inclusivity continue to inspire us.
– **Progressive Legacy**: Obama’s efforts to push for healthcare reform, LGBTQ rights, and climate change action still resonate with us.
### Real-Life Examples 🌟
Let’s look at how some Obama supporters from back then view him now:
1. **Sara, 2008 Supporter**:
– “I may not agree with everything he did, but I respect his leadership and integrity.”
2. **Mike, 2012 Supporter**:
– “Obama’s legacy of helping the economy recover after the recession has made a lasting impact on me.”
### Keyword Integration 📊
When reflecting on Obama’s presidency over the past 10 years, it is imperative to consider terms like “Presidential Legacy,” “Political Impact,” and “Policies Implemented” to provide a comprehensive analysis of his tenure.
### Conclusion 🌈
In conclusion, as Obama supporters from 2008 or 2012, our views on him have likely been shaped by a mix of nostalgia, admiration, and critical reflection. Regardless of our political affiliations today, it’s undeniable that his presidency left a significant mark on American history. Let’s keep celebrating the positive change he brought and continue to strive for a better future! 🌟🇺🇸 #ForeverObamaFans
Remember, your love for Obama doesn’t have to end with his presidency – it can continue to inspire and drive positive change in the world! Share your thoughts below on how you view Obama now, 10 years later. Let’s keep the conversation going! 💬
remember him as a war mongerer
I think he did a lot of great things domestically, as outlined by many other commenters. His foreign is that of a typical American president, which is not great. Here’s a great [article](https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/09/barack-obamas-shaky-legacy-human-rights) from Human Rights Watch about his human rights abuses. I like the wording they use, it’s “shaky”, he’s not a monster but he’s far from the thoughtful peacemaker that many people make him out to be.
He isn’t as bad as other presidents, and he was kinder and more intelligent than most presidents, but he still fell in line with the US imperial status quo. I think if he didn’t expand his drone programs and was less contradictory with his Middle Eastern policy, he would be seen as a great leader and peacemaker. He’s a tremendous speaker and is extremely likable, it’s just hard to look past all of the civilian casualties caused by his approved drone strikes.
He’s definitely the best president in the 21st century, it’s just hard to look past his human rights abuses, he’s committed war crimes that just aren’t talked about. I see this as more of a problem with the US system, than a problem with the kind, charismatic and intelligent man Obama is. To me, he’s analogous to a good cop, that still is part of an inherently corrupt and violent system.
He’s become more of what I hate, a neoliberal from the bourgeois class who protects bourgeois interests. ACA was an incredible plan to keep healthcare in the hands of private insurers instead of universalizing medicare. Arab Spring and the military involvement in numerous foreign nations. The overthrowing of a socialist leader. Expansion of federal student loans without any hope of total forgiveness. Everything he did created profit for banks and companies, all dressed up as cakes and popcorn for the increasingly powerless working class.
As a non USA person (Australia) my view is he was a diplomat, a fine representative for your country, articulate, and a decent person. His track record of getting things through was a bit below par, though he didn’t always have a supportive Congress. Overall, a good person and President. IMHO.
voted for him at 18 in oklahoma and at 22 in ohio, most gifted orator since kennedy and his race led rabid white people to elect a groper in chief, not to mention a grifter and a con artist. I miss Obama every fucking day dude. gets trashed for wearing a tan suit one day, probably has 1000s of rednecks and bumpkins who wish they could still merrill LYNCH him. Kehinde Wiley did his portrait and it’s the coolest presidential portrait ever made.
I still love the man.
I would love him as president again, but I respect the 2 term limit rule. As it should be for every seat in congress.
Why are there so many Obama centric posts going around lately?
Amazing at optics. Horrible at foreign policy; withdrew from Iraq and increased presence in Afghanistan which was kind of bad in hindsight, blinked through Crimea’s takeover to the point where it felt like appeasement, made bad calls in the Arab Spring, put his hand on Libya too soon and stayed his hand on Syria too long, but somehow managed to shift the blame all on the gridlocked congress and S.o.S. Clinton (which was bad in hindsight) leaving him with almost no consequences in US public opinion. The foreign policy quagmires of next few years ISIS, ISIL and ISIS-K were mostly down-line of those decisions.
Watching Biden manage Foreign Policy and it’s like… okay, wow. Biden’s been also dealt a bad hand in that regard (Afghanistan retreat, Ukraine war, Gaza crisis) and I guess we can’t always be Bill, but he’s been handling it much better than Obama.
His progressive message of “Change” was ironic in hindsight because in the end, he led a centrist era where almost no meaningful economic change was enacted when radical progressive change was needed in the fallout of the Great Recession. The wealth gap accelerated and regulations faltered (some blame with the Supreme Court too but not the focus) while the rust belt stagnated under his administration, leading to massive demographic shifts that the electoral college could not anticipate (3 million more votes for the generally more educated Democrat electoral base in California right after the Silicon rush and depressed Dem turnout in the brain-drained rust belt? huh. Interesting.)
Wish he had a little more foresight and maybe a stronger backbone (or at least used some of the expertise from the talent that he inspired). He was great at pointing fingers at congress and yeah congress was shit and he was super justified, but finger-pointing can only do so much. He was a charismatic man who campaigned on Hope amidst economic despair, but his larger-than-life yet ultimately centrist policy led to disillusionment and paved the road for Hope’s defeat.
I miss the days when Presidents can be automatically called a “good” man. Is this what living through the Reagan and Nixon years felt like?
At the time, I was a total fan-girl. I was excited to vote for him and fully convinced that he was going to fix everything.
16 years later, I realize how naive I was, but that’s what your 20’s are for sometimes! Nowadays, I’m grateful for how he humanized the role of President – how much more accessible he made both himself & the office to the public, domestically & abroad. I love that we had an example of the most powerful man in government actively supporting his wife & her causes, not to mention the love they showed for their daughters.
Politically, he fell short in many ways. But the work he did to revamp the image of POTUS was priceless. And with all the racist, bigoted rhetoric we’ve seen since ’08? I think he’s a much stronger man than people give him credit for. I can’t imagine facing all that hate every day, from every corner, and being willing to step back into the line of fire. And the same goes for Michelle. If I were her, I’d never want to deal with the public ever again.
He killed a lot of people with Drone war fare. He has a lot of blood on his hands.
He was a good President. Not great, but good. It was nice to have a younger guy in the Oval Office.
I feel like he did about as good a job as any human could have considering the rise of McConnelism
He also did horrible things, as every President ever has and every president ever will. This is called “playing the game.” And while yes I do believe our system needs a serious overhaul, when I hear people say things like “Those damn politicians! We need someone in there who isn’t a politician!” all I can think about is how you would absolutely never hire a plumber to do all your electrical work
That’s obviously not a flawless analogy, but you get the idea. Overall I think Obama did a perfectly fine job, which is almost exactly how I feel about Biden despite not at all being a Biden fan at any point and time
I think the reason Trump won in 2016 is because Obama wasn’t able to pass any major reforms in his second term because of Republican obstructionism. Presidential elections are determined by how well things went in the preceding four years and unfortunately the President gets credit and blame for everything, which means that it’s in the interests of the opposition party to sabotage whatever it is the the incumbent president is trying to do.
Galifianakis said it best: how does it feel to be the first, and last, black president?
I would’ve voted for him a third time
There have been many years in which I’ve benefited from the ACA. So thanks, Obama.
I campaigned for Obama in 2007 and 2008. I would do it again if he were running and it looked like the Republican might win. But Obama was a horrific president and that he remains so popular among Democrats explains a lot about how we got here.
Yes, the bank bailout happened under Bush, but Obama’s response to the foreclosure crisis amounted to less than a single mortgage payment for most people while lenders received hundreds of billions. Obama killed American citizens, innocent bystanders, and journalists in drone strikes; expanded the domestic spying apparatus; accelerated planet-warming natural gas extraction, which he begged for credit for after leaving office; helped put a halt to a nascent organized labor movement; destroyed the last best chance for a public option; extended the Bush tax cuts; allowed dozens of multinational mergers and acquisitions to sail through, etc.
And he got nothing in return for it. He was polite, funny, well-spoken, and brilliant, but he folded like a wet paper bag at the first sign of resistance, unless the resistance was from the left. As a result, your premiums are higher than ever; the earth is facing ecological collapse; you have like five and six airline choices now and they feel emboldened to consolidate further; and the income gap between workers and executives has never been wider.
If you like living in a world where the “gig economy”, a wholesale scam perpetuated and celebrated by the Obama admin either by design or cowardice, has replaced “working for a company to produce a good or service in order to be regularly paid a fair wage and afford to live a good life”, then, thanks Obama.
But if you understand that Obama made millions of people’s lives more expensive (by handing the reigns to his big business supporters) and more precarious (by eroding the last few protections workers could enjoy), then you can see why people were, at best, bored of neoliberalism, and, at worst, desperate enough to vote for Donald Trump.
Status Quo manager, still better than a republican but honestly could have done more to help the poor
I still love Obama the person. However, when I look at how the democrats under Biden have been able to rally together, pass multiple laws, work behind the scenes with international partners, win state elections… I wonder if there isn’t some, if not a lot of truth in the commentary that Peter Zeihan has of Obama in that he was largely an Ivory Tower professor who enjoyed debates with his cabinet but didn’t really want to meet with others and didn’t quite understand how to wield the executive branch effectively. Looking at what the democrats under Biden have been able to do with the CHIPs act, the IRA, the infrastructure bill, erasing student debt, winning back state legislatures, coordinate aid for Ukraine, nudge the Saudis and Israelis closer, working the Hungarians and Turks behind the scenes to allow the Swedes and Finns into NATO, putting China on the economic defensive, etc. I can only dream of what Obama could have achieved if he had more experience in govt.
In summary: still love Obama the person but I wish he had more experience going into the presidency and could work the US govt to get more of his goals achieved.
Obama was a status quo manager with exceptional oratory skills. Neoliberal who ran as a change candidate. Did not deliver even a public option when elected with a mandate and majorities in both the house and the senate. Escalated drone warfare and never closed Guantanamo Bay. Talked about banking reform but delivered little. People have good reason to be disappointed with him in that he ran on big rhetoric and instead governed like a neoliberal.
Its easy to say he’s better than W. Bush or Trump because obviously he is, but the biggest issue I have with him is that he had the political popularity and seats to be an FDR when we needed one. He could have put us on a different trajectory.
His presidency had its flaws, but I’d take him back in a heartbeat.
He made mistakes about Russia when they started their war in Ukraine 10 years ago. If he had been harsher on them they wouldn’t have pursued their war.
Was Obama the liberal dream? No.
Would I have preferred Bernie in 2012? Yeah.
Would I take nothing but Obama-Class Presidents for the rest of my life if it meant never seeing a Trump-Class President again? Hell yeah.
Did I just classify Presidents as if they were naval craft? Also yes. I regret nothing.
He fucked us by playing the long game. He refused to tear down the mechanism by which the GOP abused office and he misplaced his trust in the people to do the right thing 100% of the time.
Instead, he played it safe, so that he could never be accused of being an activist president. He secured a future for African-American presidents for time everlasting. He just didn’t secure a future for American Democracy.
I hope his faith in us was warranted. Time has not yet proven it so.
I thought he was terrible, then I realized I got caught up in the right wing BS. Looking back now, he wasn’t all that bad.
I voted for McCain in 2008 but switched to Obama in 2012. Obama did a very good and dignified job as president. In light of more recent (2016 to 2020) presidents my opinion of him has risen significantly.
He was my first vote after I turned 18(I had turned 18 3 years before) and the little money I had I donated to his campaign.
I’ve seen a few documentaries call JFK “camelot”.
That’s kinda how I feel about those years, as a gay guy, once Obama started to support legalization of same sex marriage and overturning of Don’t ask, Don’t tell I smiled like I never had before.
And the highlight was for me was seeing the white house in pride colors…I never felt so proud and yes seen. For sometime I had that as my lockscreen.
And as a Latino when Sonia Aotomayor was appointed to the US Supreme Court, that was just icing on the cake.
I do miss the mass deportations he was pushing. We need that again
I still remember a guy on Facebook complaining about Obamacare and saying ACA was better. People corrected him and he deleted his account.
With lots of admiration
A charming war criminal.
The best president we’ve had in decades.
Overall possibly, but still furious that he didn’t codify Rowe when he had the supermajority, despite campaigning on that promise.
Terrible. That’s coming from someone whose first real political experience was volunteering for both his campaigns. He wasn’t terrible in a vacuum maybe – I think in a vacuum, if you can even talk about that, he’d have been a mediocre president. But you have to understand, he was elected in a historic moment, with a super majority. People were tired of the neocons, ground down by the 2008 financial crisis – he had about as close to a blank check as any president since FDR in his like 3rd term had had. And he absolutely squandered it.
He came in promising real change, but whether because he and his team were naive and had no stomach for a fight, or because that had always just been an image, he got rolled by the GOP and accomplished essentially none of his core promises. No single payer. The ACA was, and remains, a bad joke and a hollow reflection of what actual health care reform would look like in this country. He didn’t hold the banks responsible or toughen regulations. He didn’t close guantanamo. He expanded the drone war. He didn’t claw back any of the bureaucratic bloat in the national security state that Bush had created. His foreign policy turned Libya into the biggest open air slave market/refugee source on earth, practically. His Syrian policy was inept. I could go on, but my phone is almost dead. He was a disappointment and history, if it remembers him as anything other than the first black president, will not be kind to his legacy.
I stood in the cold at his inauguration. I fought the Bush administration tooth and nail as an anti-war activist and a Hill staffer for Ds. And despite the rose-colored glasses through which we view the last president who wasn’t a crypt-keeper stumblefuck I have to say he was a massive disappointment.
“‘this was the *moment* when the rise of the *oceans* began to slow and our planet began to heal”
Then he went and bragged about turning the U.S. into a massive exporter of oil and campaigned in front of fossil fuel piping.
What a sick joke.
The real fuck up on his watch was his poor stewardship of the political situation, especially the Senate races, while he was the head of the party. They flat out admitted that they weren’t paying attention in the midterms, and lost the Senate majority with an out of touch candidate (Coakley) while the Obama team sat on their hands and watched. As a result, no public option in the ACA and now we all have to give private insurance companies money so they can deny our claims in a system *dreamed up by conservative think tanks.*
And then there’s what they did on immigration, and the stupid as fuck deficit committee, which wasn’t even a real political possibility until Obama just out of fucking nowhere suggested something like it in a press conference.
And the drone wars, the constant bombing of people and stupid fucking escalation in Afghanistan that sure killed a lot of AQ second-in-commands and wedding parties while Osama bin Laden chilled a whole ass country away.
Obama was obsessed with a fantasy of a “team of rivals” type scenario where he could do something conservative to prove to the Rs that he was willing to play ball and they’d embrace him as a negotiating partner and one of the club. They told him to go fuck himself over and over, and he never got the message. And then he went off to go parasailing with Richard fucking Branson and stuck his head back into the game occasionally to throw rocks at Bernie Sanders to keep his Wall Street friends happy while the right’s version of populism filled the vacuum.
The racist backlash to him warmed up the scum to bring us Trump, but his own failures and flaws also helped set the stage, and even considering the disaster that came after him, we are still living with his failures.
The ACA and getting Ben Laden was great. The banks was not. The undue adulation from day 1 was embarrassing and cultish, a sort of Trump in reverse. His second term was a disaster: from not responding to Russian use of nerve gas/ Crimea, to meekly releasing his birth certificate in the face of Trump’s birther bullshit, to not standing up to Bibi when he went to Congress behind his back, to not weaponizing the entire federal government when the Republicans blocked his Supreme Court bid. He was too concerned with his legacy and was too meek in the face of a rising right wing threat, and I think he shoulders a lot of blame for not confronting Republican radicalization more forcefully and paving the way to Trump.
Best President in my lifetime
of all the presidents since i was alive(I think i was born during the second reagan term) He is the least evil. That is not a high bar, but he’s still the best one ive seen.
To go from the intelligent, well-educated, erudite, morally sound Obama presidency to the DJ Trump clusterf*ck was painful. I cried during his farewell speech because I knew what we were headed toward.
Wish he was tougher on banks but overall he was fine.
I rushed to the polls in 2008 at the ripe age of 21 to vote in my first presidential election. I voted Obama for change. While he did do several great things, there are some ugly events in his presidency. Such as he continued the Bush surveillance of ordinary citizens and called it the President’s Surveillance Program. Then, he bombed [seven Muslim-majority nations](https://www.cnn.com/2014/09/23/politics/countries-obama-bombed/index.html) throughout his eight years. He passed a Republican-style healthcare system instead of single-payer. Was he an awful president? No, but he wasn’t this Godsend people make him out to be, either.
I miss the hell out of that man. A true class act.
we didnt realize how good we had it