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Obama's last Christmas a season of disappointment; Not for Canadian participation.
Topic Started: Dec 26 2016, 12:20 AM (39 Views)
Jim Miller
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Obama's last Christmas a season of disappointment

Sunday marks President Obama's last Christmas while in office. Though he'll spend it in Hawaii rather than at the White House, it must be a bittersweet Yuletide.

Obama's handiwork is being returned to the store like unwanted Christmas presents. He is set to be succeeded by a Republican — and not just any Republican, but Donald Trump, a man the outgoing president described as an insult to his legacy. Trump for a while didn't accept Obama's United States citizenship, much less his policies.

Republicans will also control both houses of Congress, giving the party unified control of the federal government's elected branches for the first time in a decade.

Noting "I have no more campaigns to run," Obama responded to sarcastic Republican applause during his 2015 State of the Union address by quipping, "I know because, I won both of them." During his final year in office, Ohio, Florida and Iowa voted Republican for president for the first time since 2004. Pennsylvania and Michigan voted Republican for the first time since 1988. Wisconsin did so for the first time since 1984.

When Obama took office in 2009, Democrats controlled nearly three-fifths of both houses of Congress. At their peak, Democrats held a filibuster-proof, 60-seat Senate majority and outnumbered Republicans in the House 258 to 177.

After the 2016 elections, Republicans retained a 246-194 majority in the House. They will hold 52 out of 100 Senate seat seats at the beginning of next year. Both midterm elections of Obama's presidency were disasters for the Democrats. The defeat of Obama's chosen successor, Hillary Clinton, helped keep Capitol Hill in GOP hands.

"Obama increasingly looks to boost down-ballot Democrats," read the headline of a late October Associated Press story. "Obama seeks down-ballot gains after being a midterm loser," said the Hill. "Obama plans 150 down-ballot endorsements," reported CNN. "Obama endorses all the way down ballot," blared Politico.

Reality didn't match the aspirations. Democrats hit a new low in state legislative seats after the elections, dipping to 3,129 seats in the 98 state legislative chambers with a partisan breakdown. Republicans experienced a net gain of 46 seats to reach 4,170.

All told, Republicans now hold nearly 1,000 more seats in state legislatures than when Obama took office, exploding from 44 percent to 56 percent. The GOP begins 2017 controlling 67 of 98 partisan legislative chambers.

Republicans are also going to be governor in 33 out of 50 states. They hold both houses of the state legislature and the governorship in 24 states, while the Democrats have complete control in just five.

Obama's election was supposed to signal the demographic ascendance of the Democratic coalition or, in the parlance of political analysts John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, "The Emerging Democratic Majority." For now, at least, that project has been put on hold.

The president's signature domestic-policy achievement, the Affordable Care Act, isn't in much better shape. Beneficiaries are older and sicker than originally hoped, jeopardizing the viability of the law's state-based marketplaces. Premiums are spiking. Private insurers are bailing in many states. Provider networks are shrinking.

This fall, the Department of Health and Human Services projected an average 22 percent increase in premiums for the benchmark silver plan in each state. The nation's largest health insurer, UnitedHealthcare, announced it was pulling out of the vast majority of Obamacare exchanges earlier this year. Tennessee's top health insurance regulator described the state's exchange as "very near collapse."

Even the Democrats running to succeed Obama have complained about the law. Bernie Sanders promised to more or less start healthcare reform over. Bill Clinton knocked the "crazy system" under which some pay twice as much for half the coverage (his words).

Throughout the Western world, the approach to borders and national sovereignty exemplified by Obama and global political elites is under attack. Trump is arguably one of the more moderate examples of this striking backlash, which also includes Brexit and the rise of right-wing parties in Europe.

Obama insists Trump will be able to roll back 20 percent of his agenda at most. But depending on how at least the next two to four years go, his environmental regulations, immigration executive orders, Iran nuclear deal, changes to the U.S. relationship with Israel, overall impact on judicial appointments and vast swathes of Obamacare could all be on the chopping block.

That's not to say Obama's legacy will stay frozen where it is at this Christmas. A lot depends on his successor. Historians are a liberal bunch who will want to paint the Obama administration as an oasis of sanity lodged between the presidencies of George W. Bush and Trump.

Indisputably, Obama was the first black president of the United States, an indelible symbol of progress over slavery and segregation. And even the Affordable Care Act is repealed or substantially reworked, the American healthcare system will never entirely return to its pre-Obamacare status quo.

All these things will go on the positive side of the ledger when Obama is evaluated in history. But Obama's last Christmas as president is unlikely to be remembered as his best.

He and his fellow Democrats will have a blue Christmas.
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Berton
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I can still remember that because the Republicans did not endorse Obama's policies we were told that the party would not be able to elect a President for generations to come if ever. Yet it was Obama's policies which foretold the demise of his policies. They were so bad that even true blue states rejected them.

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Pat
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A reminder. The republicans of the Obama defeat did not defeat the democrats, it was the coalition of anti statist and pro America Americans who did Registering as republicans but in many cases were democrats and independents, gay straight and trans. Americans who were fed up with the establishment of both major parties.

The lessons to be embraced? 1) America will never give up it's sovereignty or freedom or embrace globalism. 2)America will not become a Europeans style socialist society. 3)Never again trust mainstream elected leaders from either major party, they are all in bed with the bankers and globalist elite. 4)Had Hillary and the progressives won, within eight years we would be a shell of our former greatness.

Let this election's lessons be burned into ouir minds and souls.
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Berton
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While I agree with nearly everything you said Pat, remember that it was the rank and file Republicans who gave Trump the start he needed to get his message across and get the other members of his coalition to come together.

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