@QMS

hollow as a chocolate easter bunny

That's an insult to honest hollow chocolate Easter bunnies.

When a 99%er munches down on a hollow chocolate Easter bunny, she gets a mouthful of delicious chocolate, along with an improved ability to breathe and an improved attitude.

When we 99%ers re-elected Obama as President, we got a mouthful of a brown substance. But it was not chocolate, I assure you.

as a chocolate easter bunny

@QMS  
Like Ted Rall’s drawing style, this use of “chocolate” is sure to be spun as racist by our many detractors.

as a chocolate easter bunny

@Bollox Ref I'd be interested to read this book, but I find the categorization that he didn't have the guts to be flat out wrong. He didn't want to. He didn't even try. He did what he was exactly supposed to do and nothing else.

"Obama Inc." all those years ago.

Pretty much on the money. I would say also that it wasn't/isn't a question of Obama not having the guts to do stuff...... he really couldn't/can't be bothered to. He really doesn't care.

@dkmich Similar to a comment I just made, I'm not agreeing with this sympathetic portrait of Obama. I'll read this book, but everything I've seen is the picture of a stereotypical new-liberal, not a jaded idealist or defeated fighter, which the word tragic implies to me. He talked the talk, but never had any intention of following through, as can be seen from his folding without a fight every time he had a winning hand, usually before he was even pushed to do so.

Dozens of former Obama associates interviewed by Garrow report having been impressed, even blown away by the future president as a young man. But many others were put off by Obama’s sense of superiority and arrogance (“full of himself” by the recollection of one Harvard Law classmate [p. 337]) and by his often lecturing, professorial “know it all” presentation – and by his transparent hyper-ambition.

From day one, all I could see when I watched and listened to him was Elmer Grantry going from town to town, setting up his revival tent to sell snake water and fleece his adoring flock. I have a visceral reaction to him, much worse than I do to the Clintons or even Trump.

“Barack is a tragic figure: so much potential, such critical times, but such a failure to perform…like he is an empty shell…Maybe the flaw is hubris, deep and abiding hubris….” (1065). Garrow quotes the onetime and short-lived Obama backer Dr. Cornel West on how Obama “posed as a progressive and turned out to be a counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a national security presidency…a brown-faced Clinton: another opportunist.”

I don't see him as tragic one bit. I see him as a predator, killing for trophy not food.

@dervish @dervish I'll be fair.

The good policies achieved under Obama's presidency:

The Lily Ledbetter Act. Yes, they rode this horse to death, and most people don't even understand that it's weak tea--all it really does is extend the amount of time a woman has to file a sexual harassment suit. Also, I believe Lily Ledbetter died in poverty. But it's good policy, as far as it goes.

Improved fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. In a correctly-run civilization, this would be simply a matter of course; we would always be trying for greater fuel efficiency at all levels. Alas, in this ridiculous excuse for a civilization, this is a political issue. It should be expected--but I'm glad it happened.

The Detroit bailout. I am torn about this one, because the fact is that the people whose jobs were saved ended up working at lower wages than they were before, which looks to me like DC was posing as a hero while driving people further into poverty. But I can't say I'd rather the Big 3 hadn't been bailed out, and that those people had in consequence lost their jobs.

And the big one...
The Iran agreement. I was sorry, when this happened, that Lavrov and Kerry had not met up before the power of law had fallen to the power of wealth (or before the sociopathic oligarchs took over, if you prefer to put it that way), because they are both skilled diplomats and the fact that the Iran agreement happened at all was a real achievement. Who knows what they could have accomplished in a better world? Of course, the CIA immediately went about sabotaging it as best they could, which is, in a way, the most enduring testimony to its worth. It wasn't the most amazing treaty in history, it wasn't everything it could or should have been, and I didn't really feel Iran needed to prove anything about its nuclear programs anyway, but given the political narrative at the time it happened, it was a positive result. To the extent that Barack Obama has a positive legacy, IMO, it will rest on this, not an insurance industry bailout with a poison pill inside.

ADDENDUM: Neither Obama Administration was responsible for the end of DOMA, though popular imagination rewrites history so; embarrassingly, it fell to the Roberts Court to undo the damage done by a former Democratic Administration. As for the end of DADT, the Obama Administration was partially responsible for that, but, again, a federal appeals court barred enforcement of the policy before they did, so...at best that seems less than stellar. Overall, the Democrats have been far less good on these policies than has been advertised.

First, he cured me of any delusions that the Democratic party can be reformed through normal methods. His failure to deliver on Hope and Change (tm) will remain a landmark for failed promises for a very long time.

Second, he proved that the Deep State will get its hooks into anybody, somehow, and that the real enemy can't be voted out of office.

Obama's actual achievements in office aren't remarkably different than Bush's.

@snoopydawg Obama's policy outcomes, especially on matters of civil liberties and war, were terrible. But his political effect was catastrophic.

During his tenure, the democrats lost seats at every level. And the republicans have control of more states that they did when he was elected.
Now the republicans can do as much damage as they want and the democrats are helpless to stop them. That's if they would bother to try. Remember what they did in 2006 after they ran on rolling back the Bush abuses. The powder is so dry now, it's basically useless.
I keep reading what the Trump administration wants to do with the budget and wonder how much of this is part of TPTB's plans? Seems like it was stacked for the democrats to have been denuded and not able to block the republicans, doesn't it?
Obama kept DWS on as head of the DNC after the disastrous 2010 midterms. She should have lost her job, except for that gave Obama the excuse he needed. The republicans meanies blocked his legislation and he just couldn't use his bully pulpit. That would have made him seem like an angry black man. Couldn't have that.