heart, that inspite of his complaints, Obama is also the best President we've had in many of our lifetimes. That I entirely agree with. That's the problem with the article's claim that only 5% of the party disapprove of Obama. I would never mark on a poll that I disapproved of Obama's Presidency. I still have criticisms.
As to our sharp turn to the right, I'm sorry, on economic issues we have moved to the right of Johnson and Carter. We've made some corrections on the way, but where was the Democratic party before the Wall Street collapse? Who was sounding the alarm? Dodd Frank as a response to a failure that was forseen by those actually paying attention, is not something worthy of a gold star for Democrats. Also, how weak has our sauce been regarding unions for a long time now? We've watched them get gutted, and mostly, quietly.
Yes, the incremental ACA was at least something. The nation was ripe for something better though. It was members of OUR party that held that back. Not sure how much blame to put on Obama for that though. It was the initial attempt at compromise with the GOP (and again, infuriatingly, with those in our own party, and those who our party leadership had supported inspite of being turncoats).
Obama is a compassionate man, and his executive orders show that. He also did not have to go on record while in office, that it was time Gay Marriage was recognized as a right.
As to his use of the bully pulpit, I'd say he was successful using it to promote a kinder, more loving American vision, but I wouldn't say he used it effectively to promote policy.
As the adult in the room, he, like Democrats in the past when they've been in charge, cleaned up the GOP financial mess left behind. Hardly any legislation was passed to prevent this mess from happening in the future, regarding Wall Street, and nobody was held accountable, but we corrected course back to a stable economy making the millionaires and billionaires their money.
As to promoting progressive policy, we got the ACA. I think we should have gotten more, but our own party members stood in the way. Whether or not, had Obama turned the screws, we could have gotten more, is hard to say, since Obama, as our first black President, had all kinds of unique challenges regarding his demeanor, etc. and democrats already ran away from the ACA right after they passed it on into their 2010 and 2012 losses. But then, they did that anyway. So perhaps he should have attempted to pressure them into something better that would have been more unimpeachable in its results.
Obama's and the rest of our side's unwillingness to champion the ACA was certainly not a succesful approach to bolstering it and taking credit for the vast improvement over our previous situation, on the level of PR. The narrative was basically ceded to our corporate news media and the right.
Also, his attempt to work across the aisle by making massive overtures, was at first glance a clever attempt at being so reasonable that the GOP would be shamed into getting on board. But this course should have been corrected immediately when it was made clear that what it did was give the GOP nothing to fear from being the party of no. The worst case scenario for them became the watered down compromise bill. Instead, how long did it take Obama and team to realize that he needed to go it alone on some of these issues? His last few years in office?
That said, he was far from a failure. Stoller's premise would have to be that Obama wanted what the leftmost progressives want, and I don't believe that to be true. For all of the ways Obama inspired me, he rarely did so on policy. Aside from the ACA, when it comes to economic issues and those of the social safety-net, I'd say he was slightly to the left of the status quo(which is still better than most "viable" alternatives).
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