2 ms·

> Obama ran as a populist Not from the US and I like Obama and wouldn't have minded a third term. He had his flaws, some of them severe and stupid, but it at l

> Obama ran as a populist Not from the US and I like Obama and wouldn't have minded a third term. He had his flaws, some of them severe and stupid, but it at least had a solid direction and successes despite a lot of sabotage towards his reform attempts. But when I suggested that his "change"-campaign is basically the definition of populist massaging some otherwise quite smart people were shocked. Perhaps insecurity about my support, but it cannot get much more populist than that to be honest. The scary part is that the word got redefined for political purposes lately. Also, populism isn't always negative. Most "corrected" definitions today say it is authoritarian but it is also often the exact opposite.

rayiner 4y ago
People are remembering Obama for the way he governed, as a polished socially liberal globalist—the guy who sued Catholic nuns to force them to pay for contraception, when there was a government program that would have paid for it—instead of the populist campaign he ran. In 2008, he railed against big banks and elites. He called for bailing out GM. Here talked about the need to stop illegal immigration: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4656370/user-clip-sen-barack-obama-illegal-immigration https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4656370/user-clip-sen-barack-.... On social issues, he signaled that he was solidly within the Midwestern mainstream. He emphasized his Kansas roots. He opposed same-sex but supported civil unions. He distanced himself from the radicalism of his former pastor Jeremiah Wright. He was not out at the forefront of anything, and didn’t attack the social values of the Midwesterners he was courting.