Obama IS progressive, and he will most likely be re-elected. Welcome to reality.

[frazzled]

41. I think the appropriate question to ask is ...

If a Republican—say, John McCain—had been elected president in 2008, would any of the the things on your list (and more) ever have been even initiated, much less passed into law, directed by executive order, or indeed even discussed. To take a few:

1. Would there have been an executive order banning torture and ordering the closure of Guantanamo? (We can only assess his order to close Gitmo, not it's having been blocked by the Congress.) I think this is a definite no: Republicans still support torture as a means of interrogation and are still trying to prevent the president from trying terror cases in civilian courts. No such directives would have been issued and, despite the president's (continuing, failed) efforts to try cases in the courts, the situation would be decidedly worse.

2. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It's fair to say that no Republican would have either initiated or supported this law. Women's right are not even on their radar, and the only issues of economic justice they focus on are "economic rights for millionaires and billionaires." We'd be where we were in 2008, with women unable to even contest inequities and discrimination when new evidence of them was found.

3. Repeal of DADT and a host of other anti-discriminatory measures for LGBT community. Don't make me laugh. You wouldn't even have had rights groups lobbying the White House for such changes, because it was not going to happen. Anybody remember gay rights groups lobbying GWB for a reversal? The very fact that Obama was there made them able to do so.

4. Kicking commercial banks out of the student loan program and creating a more equitable payback schedule for graduates, based on percentage of their income. (Also increasing outright Pell Grants for the poor). Republicans are the ones who got private banks funneled into this government-run program as middlemen. Obama single-handedly took them out of the game. So I think the contrast is pretty clear here. It was going to be business as usual. (Same for getting rid of the extra payments to private insurers in Medicare: Obama reversed that Republican-initiated attempt at privatization).

5. Health care reforms like banning rejection for pre-existing conditions, banning lifetime or yearly caps, banning recissions, letting young adults to age 26 stay on a parent's plan, requiring insurers to spend 80% to 85% of premiums on actual care, etc. Now, you will say, it should have been a lot better. Of course it should have: both the president and most Democrats (though by no means all) wanted more. My point is that health care reform would never even have gotten on any agenda in a Republican administration, and in the four or eight years more of not regulating it at all real lives would be lost and real families would have a better chance of going bankrupt. If you liked the status quo of the insurance industry, then you will not see the ACA as progressive. If you thought the status quo stunk you will see the bill as achieving progress along a path that can be further enhanced in the coming years. What you cannot deny is that we wouldn't even have had a discussion about health care in the absence of this administration, who boldly put it on the agenda before anything else.

Etc.

You may object that these things are not progressive enough (some might say at all). You are judging these things, then, against what some ideal Democratic president would have done--and more importantly, would have been able to accomplish (a very dicey counterfactual situation). Do remember that the vastly preferred "progressive" candidate on DU back in 2007 and 2008 was John Edwards, who was one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate. Your judgment on these things may not be totally fine-tuned, and your clairvoyance may be lacking. Or you are thinking Alan Grayson or Bernie Sanders (not a Democrat), two people who would never in a million years ever have a chance of being elected, would propose something better. Well, they might propose something you like better. But they wouldn't get it; they wouldn't even be in a position to get it.

The only thing we can do is ask: would McCain have done any of these things? Would any of these advancements--imperfect as they are-- ever even have come to the table at all? Will Romney/Gingrich pursue any such things? You can't ask whether this or that bill promoted by this administration was progressive enough, because "enough" is only measurable by the possible alternatives. In the absence of this administration, there would not even be any discussion of them at all. John McCain would not have pursued any health care reform, he wouldn't have taken up a single issue of gay rights or emissions standards, he would have appointed two more extremely conservative Supreme Court justices, he wouldn't care about unemployment benefits.

What you would have gotten is either the status quo or regression: that is to say, no progress at all.