this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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Why do people keep dunking specifically on Obama for this? Isn't this the same as every US president ever?
Obama was the “change” guy that libs thought was gonna make everyone’s lives better. The rest of them are known to be evil pieces of shit, but libs with zero principles need to be reminded of their naivety. Notice how Obama deported the most Mexicans of any president ever and libs dont even give a fuck lmao.
You do remember who preceded Obama, right? At the time, W. was the dumbest president the world had ever seen. In comparison to that, I'd say Obama delivered on the hope and change.
I'm not saying that I can excuse his take on deportation, or the fact that he's also an establishment democrat, but at this point, who the fuck cares? I'd take another Obama over Trump in a heartbeat. I'd rather have someone in office that I agree with 40% of their takes than 0%.
Obviously he's neither perfect now, nor was he at the time, but why are people still talking about him at all? Same with Biden. His administration shit the bed and got us in the current situation, but there's not anything we can do about it now.
We need to be looking forward, and dunking on someone who was (in comparison to US presidents) always ranked in the top 20% of most progressive of ALL presidents, and only behind Carter in the last 50 years... it seems like in order to get more left, we've got a lot of ground to cover and Obama would be in the correct direction.
Obama wasn't a progressive, he just sounded progressive. He had a mandate, a majority in both houses, and what does he do?
Continue everything the last guy did, pass the healthcare plan from the creators of project 2025, and attempt to "reach across the isle" towards people openly racist towards him
If we had another Obama, we'd just be putting fascism on hold for another 8 years. We can't keep splitting the difference with the far right
But the choice will be Trump-like or Obama-like. There is no "progressive revolution" option at this time.
Complaining about Obama-like is pushing a both sides narrative, which suppresses democrat voters.
If you want things to be less shit, stop doing that.
I refuse your defeatist nonsense. There's 3 years left, progressives are making huge inroads into both local governments and the party machinery, and the old guard is being changed out
Even if I were wrong about it, that's still the only way out. Obama-like means nothing changes, Biden was Obama-like - we didn't recover from Trump I, Biden just stabilized the new normal and insisted it's fine now.
We have to demand better, starting now. While we have the time
I don't think you understand politics or progression.
Your entire take is that Obama just held the ground. We forget we could have had Mitt Romney who would have been just as worse if not far worse a choice than Obama.
I see tons of comparisons, we need better! We need to do better! And everyone is comparing the president how to Obama and the president then to Obama. America did absolutely better picking Obama over Mitt Romney and I am confused as to why we aren't comparing the president then to the competitor then.
You can disagree with 60 percent of what a president did and argue people on the opposite side are going to react and just push the change back but if you want real change you pick the person that has 40% of what you agree with and you do that time and time again <until it is 50 percent and so on so forth.
Feel how you want but setting here and going, Everyone praises Obama and he did the shit those people complain about is just a dumb ass way of looking at what Obama brought to the table. It took one idiot in office to destroy the good he did and the good Biden tried to hold on to.
Sitting here and spouting nonsense that Obama would still be a worse choice is just a shit view. It would 100% still be better than the fucking moron we have in office now and I would take 40 Obama's for the next 10 years over 40 Trumps. It is a common sense statement to act self righteous with, "we gotta do better than Trump or Obama." Yeah, we get it. That is the obvious statement. But to say Obama was a bad choice given the margin of difference between him vs Trump is just fucking stupid no matter where you stand. To say if we had Obama vs Trump and we shouldn't pick another Obama is stupid because "we have to do better." That isn't how shit works either. You pick what is good in the moment.
I am not sure why people suddenly forget the president doesn't run the whole country when it comes to decision making. So suddenly we start just comparing the presidents but the office in power with the president is a big deal as well.
Obama may have made many decisions the majority of libs are complaining about but the problem is Libs liked him because of what he stood for on the better side of things versus the shit in office now. The Obama standard is the good we had until Trump and that is why it is the still wanted standard because it meant something even with the bad.
So feel how you want but taking the stance of, "we got a do better." Isn't a winning case. It is just a statement. Getting people to see some of the good that was done then is what matters and Obama had some of that and that is the point. You have to have something to look at and compare too. Who would you suggest would be better now? How would we do better? Could you help run a country with all of your wisdom? No, Obama would still be 100 times better and I would pick and Obama any fucking day even if it just meant slowing cons down or holding their ridiculous mind set off for a thousand years.
Went to Harvard and Yale. First president with an MBA. SAT score was good. His folksy act was just that. An act. He was told to dumb down his language by Karl Rove and others. There are videos of him speaking before he became a presidential nominee, and the difference is obvious.
Relatively intelligent man pretending to be stupid.
And to his credit, it worked. Got elected twice and to this day people are more likely to blame the Iraq war on evil mastermind Cheney. And unlike plenty of supposedly intelligent leaders, he's smart enough to keep a low profile now he's retired.
You can actually look up footage from when he was Governor of Texas in the 1990s and he was well-spoken and intelligent (despite his saying very little that I agreed with). Did he have an aneurysm prior to the 2000 election? Not very likely, especially when Republicans have been consciously targeting their rhetoric at a fifth-grade reading level for decades.
I don't understand why we're so willing to believe that the people who have completely taken over the United States of America with minimal effort have somehow done this while being literally stupid.
Overused, but might be Dunning Kruger. Less intelligent people, overestimating their own intelligence, and underestimating that of others. If so, it would explain why the same people who are certain Bush is a moron, are often unwilling to change their minds when presented with evidence to the contrary. That and it feels nice to think you're smarter than other people. Vanity is the Devil's favourite sin.
Not that I like Bush, just want to make that clear.
Also, Trump likely is stupid, from what I can tell. Although I have heard critics say he has or at one point had a measure of cunning, which certainly may be true given he won the presidency twice.
Not that this changes Trump being a dangerous man.
Trump is literally a reality TV star, which means his public persona is sort of loosely based on who he really is but also heavily improvised and scripted at the same time in order to increase his entertainment value. Based on my familiarity with him from before all of this bullshit (in the '80s), he's no genius but he's not especially stupid either. Like a lot of rich people, he doesn't bother being smart because intelligence is of no real use to him.
He is good at flooding the zone/firehosing/deadcatting. That's for sure.
Not a great way to run a country, not sure if it's always deliberate and/or pathological, but good for ratings and helped get him elected twice.
I do think he has declined mentally since the 80s. He's an old man, doesn't always look well, and appears increasingly erratic. Not a doctor though, so what do I know. I've grown cynical about his supposedly imminent demise, just like I've become cynical about his supposedly imminent jail sentence.
Were you alive and old enough to remember GWB's term? Or are you going entirely on second hand information?
Because I am, and he was definitely a fucking idiot.
For fuck sake, Donald Trump went to Wharton. It just means they had rich and well connected parents.
Remember when Dubya was the dumbest one?
Yes. I was studying political science at the time.
No, I am not going by second hand information. I'm going by how he spoke before Karl Rove told him to dumb it down.
At least one of Donald Trump's professors has said he's an idiot. Not true for Bush, who scored relatively well on his SATs. IRC John Kerry's transcript scored lower than W Bush's. IRC Bush's air force qualifying test was also relatively high.
To be clear, I'm not saying he's a good president. If anything I'm saying stupidity isn't an excuse for what happened during his tenure.
Oh look, another plain-speaking “smart” republican that needs interpretation and rationalization to tell us who he really is and what he really means.
Sure man. Canned speeches vs real time. Not even in the same league as Obama. Dude got the job because of the family name and thought it would be an easy ride until reality hit him right in thr nose. Then he got all fundy and stubborn. Know who else graduated from prestigious schools and is president? Yeah, bet you can guess.
Nope. Saw him speaking off the cuff before he was a presidential nominee.
Relatively high SAT score. Score higher on his transcript than John Kerry. IRC scored relatively high on his air force qualifying test too.
He purposely dumbed down his language and it helped him get elected.
As opposed to Donald Trump, where at least one professor has said he's a moron.
To be clear, I'm not saying Bush was a good president. Quite the opposite. If anything him being relatively intelligent makes him more culpable for what happened.
We are looking forward by making excuses for our past? Lol okay.
The fuck excuses? We can do better than this, but you've gotta look at everything in context. Until we have a (most likely violent) revolution, the core values of our leadership isn't going to swing very wildly. Incremental change is all that voting will get you. Obama wasn't some god that was suddenly going to change what this country is, but he was a step away from Bush and in the right direction. It's shocking to me how far from normal Trump is and its fucking infuriating that instead of looking forward, part of the left is all "b-b-b-but Obama wasn't perfect!"
It's like I agree with your observations but come to different conclusions about what is to be done. I agree Obama, nor any other politician can deliver the change we need given the system we have. To me the lesson isn't Obama was so much better than Bush or Trump, but that we need to look to ourselves and not for some great leader to save us.
Because he made a lot of dumb kids believe he would be the good one, the was just another bog standard piece of shit, except better at talking.
He made people hope, then murdered that hope¹ with a hellfire missile launched from a drone, to the point we dare not hope on days with a clear blue sky.
¹for anyone who paid literally any attention or had a memory longer than 12 seconds. Also all the people he murdered, but neither of us care about them.
Spicy take from a guy named after a Dilbert character.
the point is to drive a wedge between leftists (who see him as just another imperialist figurehead) and liberals (who see him as the most progressive president we've had since lbj)
Ah yes, liberals. Known for being famously aligned with leftism.
I presume you're a shitlib?
What of our programs are you on board with?
Since your party has spent the last year trying to kill the president by sucking his dick like the offspring of Nancy reagan and a jet engine til he has a heart attack, I presume you've decided to back left projects, the projects of your allies, until there's a viable lib option again.
What are your mutual aid projects? How do you support your local socialist groups? Are you going more militant/insurrectionist and arming the most marginalized in your community? No need to be too overly specific.
Because everyone here already knows that other recent US presidents like Bush and Trump were horrible. But many people mistakenly believe Obama was a morally good president simply because they're the best of a bad bunch. It's important to understand that even Obama presided over large-scale, avoidable atrocities.
Maybe because he's the only one who made someone happy?
The right can't attack the left because the left just laughs at them, but the right can attack the left by pretending to be the most left and then call out the left for not being left enough.
Liberals are the right. Please read a book for once in your life…
tell me, if liberals are "the left", then why are they fighting so damn hard against people like mamdani for being leftists?
if you're gonna be a fucking idiot, do it somewhere else, so the rest of us don't have to step in your drool.