Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

I think the word people are searching for is rehabilitating.

how did we decide after we had the experience of Obama for eight years that we should elect this piece-of-shit corrupt racist know-nothing narcissistic greedy want-to-be fascist game show host with a borderline personality disorder

as a species we are awful

how did we decide after we had the experience of Obama for eight years that we should elect this piece-of-shit corrupt racist know-nothing narcissistic greedy want-to-be fascist game show host with a borderline personality disorder

Because life didn't improve for most people over those eight years.

xxp

Yes, that would be a better word, but still the point remains, on what planet do we think that the biggest risk of a Biden/Harris ticket is the rehabilitation of known Democratic pariah Barack Obama?

And then the Democrats nominated someone who refused to promise anyone a better future, who was also widely disliked. So fewer voters of color showed up to the polls, fewer who did voted for the widely disliked person who was promising a slow decline, and racist evangelical psychos turned out in record numbers.

racist evangelical psychos turned out in record numbers.

Two words: Merrick Garland.

I think life did improve for the majority of americans during those 8 years!!

hereeeeeeeee we go

Department of Homeland Security issued internal legal guidance telling officers they would not be held liable for tear gassing journalists as long as they weren't directly targeted.

Hope Joe Biden can get his "shoot them in the legs" policy past the lawyers!

#onethread

Based on real wages, inequality, household wealth, exploding housing costs, etc. life did not improve for many people.

You can blame it on Republicans after 2010 or before 2008 but that doesn't change that the "experience" of the Obama Presidency was life getting harder and more difficult for most people. That's a hard sell to people as some golden age that should have continued on blissfully forever after.

harder and more unpleasant*

Life didn't improve for most people during the Obama years? Plausible, possibly true, certainly worth an intelligent discussion.

Life didn't improve for terrible people during the Obama years? Probably true, but it's an open question whether the blame for that should be entirely on Obama or at least partly on those terrible people.

The question is like an onion; it has layers.

Are we saying that a Biden/Harris ticket that aims to remind people of the "golden age" of the Obama years is going to be a hard sell for actual voters?

Doesn’t seem that way to me. What I was responding to was shock that we could pass from the “experience of Obama” to Trump, which seems entirely explicable to me.

And will happen again in 2024 if quality of life doesn’t rapidly improve under President Biden for whatever reason.

what do you make of this?

https://news.gallup.com/poll/195179/standard-living-ratings-rise-during-obama-presidency.aspx

xp don't really see it as explicable except as a racist reaction

under Obama The economy gained a net 11.6 million jobs. The unemployment rate dropped to below the historical norm. The number of people lacking health insurance dropped by 15 million.

People liked Obama

YMP otm. a little weirded out by making sweeping statements about how well did under Obama, as if we're all one giant monolith.

Right

That people of color and lower incomes (ie the Democratic core) mostly lagged behind whites (ie the Republican core), the improvement was marginal relative to the rock bottom of the Great Recession and that I don’t know how much that question represents actual feelings about individuals’ lives.

I'm still scratching my head about which portion of the population is at danger of rehabilitating the most popular politician in the country, what's causing said rehabilitation, and what will it cause should it happen.

xp

Could just be an index of false consciousness

The economy gained a net 11.6 million jobs. The unemployment rate dropped to below the historical norm. The number of people lacking health insurance dropped by 15 million.

Were they good, secure, well-paying jobs?

The insurance was a win, of sorts, but does a bronze plan actually improve access to healthcare?

My Republican governors have played the same job creation card and it’s objectively true, if you think it doesn’t matter that the jobs were in Amazon warehouses and Dollar Generals.

job creation stats being misleading due to the creation of mostly low-paying jobs that don't cover enough to get by without supplemental income... has been a problem for decades, and coincides with wages not keeping up with inflation.

not sure if the problem got worse under Obama or stayed the course, as I haven't really dug very deep into that.

Liking Obama is a different question from shock at the “experience of Obama” transitioning to Trump. You never get to vote for Obama again.

Racism explains the evangelical psychos but doesn’t explain why turnout and voter share among Black and Latinx voters declined from 2012 to 2016.

i think I know a reason, it's Comeying to me

At one point during the Obama administration, I happened to be managing a government effort to measure and document the economic impact of ARRA.

There was widespread right-wing ridicule of the Obama administration's claim of jobs created or saved due to ARRA. "How can you be sure," the standard criticism went, "that a job that still exists has truly been 'saved' by government efforts? For all you know, that job was never in danger in the first place."

It has been no surprise to me that the current administration's claims of economic improvement ALSO partly rest on theoretical jobs "saved."

in ten years, there will be only one job, and it will pay minimum wage, and only 50% of the workforce will have it.

sci-fi dystopian novel or reality

"Racism explains the evangelical psychos but doesn’t explain why turnout and voter share among Black and Latinx voters declined from 2012 to 2016"

there was a facebook-enabled misogynist smear campaign against hillary throughout all segments of the country, it affected every community

I guess that’s easier to accept than “median household income never recovered to 2007 levels until 2016.”

Let assume for a minute that disappointment with Obama was a factor in the 2016 result. Are we saying the association of Biden with Obama, and the possibility of having a VP who reminds some people on here of Obama will be a drag on Biden's election effort?

Which, again, you can blame on Republicans if you want. But Democrats have to sell people a better life and future, Republicans can just lean on the honky death cult and generalIzed dissatisfaction (and voter suppression).

Noodles, no one is saying that.

So what point exactly are we making about America's love/hate relationship with Obama and the 2020 election? It seemed like there might be a point there, but now I'm not too sure.

Read Dan D’s post expressing shock about the “experience of Obama” and how we got here and the many references since made to that post?

We’re living in ‘even shittier 2008’ where the Republicans obviously bear responsibility for everyone’s life going to shit. Biden’s going to win, barring a coup. Obama doesn’t matter one way or another this year.

A repeat of 2008-onward, however, the “experience of Obama” minus charisma, intellect or genuinely monumental status, does matter

a dark post

don't think 2008 was shitty in retrospect, except for californians voting for prop 8

... also an economic collapse that wiped out household wealth?

I was gonna say

also gas at near $4 gallon, though it definitely tapered off as demand plummeted due to that fact. I was driving 50 miles round trip to work back then and asked for one WFH day due to the sheer gasoline cost of it.

I meant the election of 2008, not the bush economic collapse

milo wasn't

-talking about that

Yeah, the election went fine (hey, for all his flaws, Obama beats the hell out of either Clinton so I don't regret my primary or general vote). But the year was awful in every other conceivable way. We've only just now managed to top that economically with a pandemic for dessert, a "shittier 2008."

still don't agree with "because life didn't improve for most people over those eight years" and all of your justifications, milo

As has been said many times before, Trump's win was determined by tiny vote margins in a few key states. The fact that those margins were so small makes it so that his win can be attributed to just about any plausible factor you can think of.

How do you think it improved? Insurance, sure, though I don't think you'll find most people were that jazzed by the ACA. Same-sex marriage - but Obama didn't make that happen (and didn't change the situation for most people).

Median household income didn't recover to pre-Obama levels until 2016, while rent (and rent as a percentage of income) steadily rose nationwide (faster in cities). The cost of going to or sending your kid to college increased 20% over the Obama administration's tenure. Life expectancy actually began to dip over his last years.