6 ms·
Didn't Democrats have control of both the House and the Senate for a period? Also, doesn't being the POTUS mean you know how to bridge gaps and compromise? Soun
by marknutter 10y ago
Didn't Democrats have control of both the House and the Senate for a period? Also, doesn't being the POTUS mean you know how to bridge gaps and compromise? Sounds like a convenient excuse to point fingers at the other side.
- aioprisan 10y agoYou mean all of 2 years out of his 8? Remember the big healthcare reform bill that got passed and the American Recovery Act that prevented the American car manufacturers from closing up shop? What do you know, things can get passed when that party has control, but since then the GOP did everything possible to block all their efforts. So yeah, not much help for those millennials from the GOP.
- marknutter 10y agoPerhaps the reason the Democrats lost their super majority was because they rammed ACA and ARRA down the throats of congress with no bipartisan cooperation. It's hard to get the other side to work with you when you've demonstrated how little their opinions matter to you in the first place.
- aioprisan 10y agoThat's generally the nature of massive reform. It had to be done and there were political costs associated with it, but it was worth it from a net cost and health outcomes perspective. Desegregation was pretty unpopular as well, are you saying that shouldn't have happened either?
- marknutter 10y agoYou're comparing desegregation to the ACA? I'm pretty sure most Democrats are unhappy with the ACA.
- aioprisan 10y agoCare to cite that source? Is this in recent memory or a poll done at the height of ad campaigns being run trying to assuage folks one way or the other? To help you out, here's what the latest June 2016 polling says about Democrats and that ACA: "16 percent of Democrats report an unfavorable opinion, down from 25 percent in April." (http://kff.org/global-health-policy/poll-finding/kaiser-health-tracking-poll-june-2016/ http://kff.org/global-health-policy/poll-finding/kaiser-heal...)
- marknutter 10y agoI guess what I mean is, when compared to a single-payer system, most Democrats were unhappy with the ACA. I'd be wary of believing any polls about the ACA in general because Democrats likely feel a duty to support it in the face of criticism from Republicans. A much more informative poll would be asking Democrats whether they would have preferred a single-payer system.
- michaelchisari 10y agoThere are decidedly left and right wings of the Democratic Party. He had a filibuster-proof majority of Democrats, but he did not have a filibuster-proof majority of liberals.
- marknutter 10y agoDoesn't that indicate his ineffectiveness as a POTUS, though? He couldn't even work with his own party.
- michaelchisari 10y agoPossibly. But I think it moreso indicates that two party systems are actually multiparty systems without any of the benefits of multiple parties. The various factions operate within their party. The Republicans have the same issue, but they're less pronounced.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoI would say the republicans have even more factional problems than the democrats...tea party and trump, moderates, Cristian coalition, etc..! But since they don't control the White House, they are at least unified in there Obama hate, which is mostly how they are perceived.
- michaelchisari 10y agoYou're right, the factional problems of the Republicans are huge this time around. But they weren't so much in 2008.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago2008 basically started the tea party. I would also claim that Democrat factions were pretty subdued before 2008 as well.