adage.com
How do liberals defend Obama
Chase Brooks
Adrian Morgan
You just don't hear about the ones that do. Most aren't politically aware enough to know what is going on or they do but were given wrong info. I bet none of you even know there is a guy along with his wife who have been protesting every single president by sitting in a tent across from the white house for well over a decade iirc.
Justin Mitchell
What are you talking about, you conspiracy nut?
This is necessary for our economy to function you traiter.
Grayson Ward
The more engaged liberals who apologize for Obama were tricked by the illusion of success. During the Bush administration they whined endlessly about his heavy handed policies and low approval ratings. Obama was swept into office and and they got what they wanted; an outwardly respectable and popular president, but that wasn't easy to maintain. His actual record was pretty disastrous even (or especially) from a partisan perspective, and endless blame shifting and special pleading were the only response liberals could give critics. The Republicans are mean, it's the Senate's fault he keeps getting outmaneuvered, the big banks didn't technically break the law so we can't prosecute them etc. They gave up on having a political program or vision of any kind, and paid for their arrogance and cynicism in 2016.
John Adams
we wouldn't live without you, republican flag.
Ian Bailey
but thats democrat flag
Charles Morris
The seven undeclared wars being undeclared is a major factor - I don't know. I know Obama bombed the fuck out of a bunch of countries, but his treatment of these conflicts still seems comparatively hands-off, not only vs. Bush, but vs. Clinton too - like, the fact that the US ended up ultimately losing in Syria seems to be a testimony to this. The US involvement was awful, but not as heavyhanded and relied somewhat on piggybacking off of turmoil in these countries. I doubt that any president with full-on invasive wars under their name didn't also do this sort of side-picking shit, and so Obama looks better than his predecessor on foreign policy even if better is not actually good - we (yes, "we," because I spent most of his presidency attempting to reconcile my defense of his less shitty policies with his continuation Bush-era shit) would cling to his not being quite as full-retard as Bush especially on foreign policy. Notably, Bush lost Osama Bin Laden once or twice when the military had a chance to get him - he wanted to be sure Iraq and Afghanistan were destroyed, but Bin Laden he let slip away. Obama was the other way - so Syria still sort of exists, and Assad lives, but Bin Laden was taken out via targeted assassination.
Besides that? Healthcare - healthcare reform being seen as a step towards single-payer or a more viable option. Yes, ACA is shit - it panders to corporate healthcare lobbyists who didn't want to have to compete. But it was an improvement, and others have argued to me that its flaws can now be fixed by simply offering a decent public option.
He left Iraq, of course (but this would probably have occurred around the same time anyway), and also did away with some of the NSA's unwarranted surveillance power and let some Patriot Act provisions expire - these were good things, though he also renewed the rest of the Patriot Act and I'm fairly certain that what power was reduced was not anywhere near enough.
Finally (for this post) - the black president thing. Yeah, this was a milestone. And I'm serious about this - I don't think Obama was a good president (I do think he was the least shitty president since Carter, but right before Carter you have Ford, Nixon, and LBJ), but the fact that the US could even elect a black president was significant and turned out to be sort of a confirmation that most of us could get over this bullshit. It was actually reinforced when Hillary lead in the popular vote in '16, though that was kind of a look at the other guy deal whereas Obama was competing with relatively coherent candidates. And unlike Clinton, he didn't just run on "I'm a black guy and my opponent is more generally repulsive than me" - Obama was actually hitting decidedly populist notes while his opponents framed him as a foreigner or a black nationalist or a Muslim, etc. The day he was elected, I saw people claiming he had "ruined" the country. The Christian conservatism, the dismissive racist status quo, the rampant apologism for Iraq - this stuff all went out during Obama. The idea of a black president isn't a pipedream, now - Jesus no longer holds popular sway on shit like evolution - and Iraq is rightfully recognized as a useless national shame less than a decade after my school cafeteria had joined in announcing "freedom fries" to help shame the French. Obama, for a moment, was a great symbol of this social change. A shitty president, though, yes.
Hope these answer your question - many of these people have not lived through a better president.
Brayden Robinson
For the record, any of these defenses (except the social politics shit at the end) can be pretty easily shot down, but that's not really the point.
Jason Murphy
Liberals