He doesn't feel like he elevated the debate and that partisanship was too strong to overcome. While other people may disagree with me, I think that Obama's biggest problem was that he is essentially an Academic. I believe that he went into this with the best of intentions. He truly thought that you could govern like you write a persuasive essay. He thought he could just lay out his points and that Republicans would come around or at least some of them would come around.
He was wrong. The Republicans never worked with him and now that he is leaving, the Democratic Party is becoming the Republican Party. Democrats are now becoming even more partisan in some ways than Republicans. We saw it when most of the Democratic Party fell in line to support Hillary Clinton.
In general, Democrats have been known as the "doves." They knowningly supported a hawk who supported the Iraq War and countless other military actions that ended in disaster. Democrats were supposed to be the party that fought for the environment, but they shoved that to the side to support someone who sold fracking around the world. Democrats in general, support equal rights for all people or are supposed to, but they supported a woman who didn't support gay marriage until 2013. It seems that for too many people, partisanship, trumps even their highest ideals.
Now as we had into the Trump Presidency, Democrats and those on the Left have a choice. Will the party eventually divide in two, go back to its routes as the younger generations gradually take over, or will they continue to be the Clinton Party and keep losing.
There is a reason why Republicans now hold more political power than they have in the last 80 years. They are about to take over the White House, maintain the Senate, maintain the House, and we are down to just 11 Democratic Governors. The reason is that Republicans fight for what they want and far too many Democrats will support anyone with a D by their name because they are scared of what the Republicans will do.
It is partisanship that caused many Democrats to completely abandon everything they supposedly win to defeat Trump. That is why they lost. When given the choice between a real Republican and Republican lite, most people will choose the real thing. Partisanship is at the route of many of our problems.
Obama viewed it as a personal insult if people didn't vote for him. Well I view it as a personal insult that Liberals were expected to vote for someone they didn't believe in, because she had a D by her name.
Discus this article below, or come join us in our Progressive Chat Forum for more general Progressive discussion.