Why Didn't Democrats Do More When They Controlled Both Houses of Legislature, The White House, and The Supreme Court During Obama's First Term?

I’ve been wondering for a bit why during the time the Democrats controlled the legislature, executive, and judicial branches during Obama’s first term in 2008 more wasn’t accomplished. Shouldn’t that have been the opportunity to make Row V Way law and fix the electoral college? I understand the recession was going on but outside of Obamacare getting passed which didnt go far enough it seems like they didn’t really do much with all that power. Are there other important accomplishments from this time that didn’t get the news they deserved? It seems like the voters have done their job in the past to elect people to fix things and yet we are still here begging people to vote to fix issues like abortion rights.

GamingChairModel,

I disagree with your premise. The 111th Congress got a lot done. Here’s a list of major legislation.

  • Lily Ledbetter Act made it easier to recover for employment discrimination, and explicitly overruled a Supreme Court case making it harder to recover back pay.
  • The ARRA was a huge relief bill for the financial crisis, one of the largest bills of all time.
  • The Credit CARD Act changed a bunch of consumer protection for credit card borrowers.
  • Dodd Frank was groundbreaking, the biggest financial reform bill since probably the Great Depression, and created the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, probably one of the most important pro-consumer agencies in the federal government today.
  • School lunch reforms (why the right now hates Michelle Obama)
  • Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP or SCHIP): healthcare coverage, independent of Obamacare, for all children under 18.
  • Obamacare itself, which also includes comprehensive student loan reform too.

That’s a big accomplishment list for 2 years, plus some smaller accomplishments like some tobacco reform, some other reforms relating to different agencies and programs.

Plus that doesn’t include the administrative regulations and decisions the administrative agencies passed (things like Net Neutrality), even though those generally only last as long as the next president would want to keep them (see, again, Net Neutrality).

PhlubbaDubba,

Not to mention he got that all done with a majority that was actually “guaranteed” to be able to do stuff for all of a few weeks, during which his senate majority actively sabotaged Obamacare from being a public option healthcare act, because fuckin Manchincrats just have to be the singularly most determined to be killjoy assholes on the face of the entire fucking planet

thallamabond,

Joe Lieberman was his name, while he did not act alone, I’ll always remember he took the public option from us.

Also he founded No Labels, the “Unity” party that does not have a platform, but does have billionaire donors

Dark_Arc,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

Not to mention this was the first 2 years, the years an administration is typically least effective.

If Biden gets years 4-6 with a democrat majority in the house and senate it will be a big deal.

lung,
@lung@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah they can do big genocides. Nah jk, there’s always bipartisan support for that

Psychodelic,

Does this recent vote affect your opinion at all?

lung,
@lung@lemmy.world avatar

Not really, like I said, bipartisan support. Biden/Blinken just did an emergency act move to send them a ton of funding and weapons. Both parties are at the whims of the military-industrial complex because America is objectively the weapon dealer of the whole world. Even Russia uses American parts in their missiles (despite half assed attempts to prevent that). All of American economics benefits from this situation. And I mean, that’s after we already have been fuckin up the middle east for decades, with countless atrocities

Psychodelic,

Sure but the house was clearly divided. That’s data that conflicts with your main premise, no?

enbyecho,

The feet stampers need to stamp their feet. They need to be angry. It doesn’t matter why.

BackpackCat,

Thanks for this info. I always kinda felt like I must be missing something. That is a significant amount of stuff to get done especially in the face of the insane amount of filibustering the Republicans did during this time that others pointed out. I mean I still wish more was done but it gives me hope that if we can somehow weather the storm of fascists that some good legislation can be passed in the future even in the face of opposition.

dumples,
dumples avatar

Also a very important point here was how much more non-political the supreme court was then. No one would ever consider Roe vs Wade could be overturned or even want it. There were generally agreed upon rules that the supreme courts and courts in general were populated with the most qualified people. Judge appointments were scrapped by gentleman agreements if the Senator from the state where the judge was from didn't support the nomination. Same if any of the non-partisan law associations said the person wasn't qualified enough. So most judges were well qualified and if they were more conservative or liberal wasn't as big of a consideration. There were plenty of "conservative" judges appointed judges nominated by democratic and vice versa. This all change with Mitch McConnell blocking Merrick Garland appointment to the supreme court who was suggested as the more moderate alternative. This lead to the hyper partisanship of the supreme court we see now with the trump appointees. This is why trust in the organization has eroded so fast. Since it all happened so fast and judges are acting much more politically instead of following law and precedent

slickgoat,

To me, making political appointments for the judiciary always made this a possibility. It happened in the old days, and it might happen again. And it did.

draneceusrex,

Looks at the current SCOTUS roster, notices both Alito was appointed to the court in 2006, and Thomas was appointed in 1995 (after a huge sexual harassment fiasco no one seems to ever bring up any more). Finds their records are even worse than the Trump appointments.

Nope, sorry doesn’t line up…

The gross politics of the GOP started with Nixon, and was driven to overtime after they lost power when Clinton took office by Rush Limbaugh, Murdock, and the like. That was the real turning point. Where we are is a progression to the GOP going more and more radical, but the seeds were always there. Honestly, I think Roe stood for so long because they weren’t stupid enough to actually appeal it back then.

Jaysyn, (edited )
Jaysyn avatar

This falsehood has been a right-wing talking point all the way back since 2013.

When Obama had "Total Control" of Congress

Lies are easy to get away with if they are repeated often enough and given voice by many different people. Repeat a lie often enough and that lie often becomes conventional wisdom. Repeating a lie doesn't change the lie into the truth, it changes the people hearing the repeated lie. They begin to accept the lie as truth. One huge example: 'Iraq has WMD.'

...

The truth....then....is this: Democrats had "total control" of the House of Representatives from 2009-2011, 2 full years. Democrats, and therefore, Obama, had "total control" of the Senate from September 24, 2009 until February 4, 2010. A grand total of 4 months.

Did President Obama have "total control" of Congress? Yes, for 4 entire months. And it was during that very small time window that Obamacare was passed in the Senate with 60 all-Democratic votes.

Did President Obama have "total control' of Congress during his first two years as president? Absolutely not and any assertions to the contrary.....as you can plainly see in the above chronology....is a lie.

EDIT:
This is the archive of the original chronology link.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130307230207/http://www.thepragmaticpundit.com:80/2011/12/obama-did-not-control-congress-for-two.html

blargerer,

The question still stands, this just reframes it. He had a majority, just not a filibusterer proof one, so why are the Republicans so willing to remove the filibusterer when it gets in there way and the Democrats not?

Jaysyn, (edited )
Jaysyn avatar

"Why is the political party that actively wants to destroy our institutions ok with destroying our institutions?"

That's your question, reframed.

If you want a real answer, it's because Roe v. Wade "was" settled law & the Democrats are a "big tent" party with a lot of disparate views that always don't mesh together. They should be 3 parties working as a collation, but our stupid FPtP election system won't allow that.

Following that, note which party has made RCV illegal in 5 states.

HowManyNimons,

Post-2016 politics is a different animal.

conditional_soup, (edited )

So, I don’t think there’s a good single answer to this question.

Obama isn’t and wasn’t as progressive as he was (and sometimes is, mostly by Republicans) framed. The democrats only had a filibuster-proof majority for a few months, and even then, Joe Lieberman gummed up the works big time on getting the ACA through. Somebody mentioned that they wasted a lot of time trying to get bipartisan support for the ACA, and it’s true. They spent months negotiating against themselves with the republicans, whose answer was always “no”, and by the time they were done, the ACA was a shell of what it could have been. After the ACA, which I must add is basically comprised of all the non-insane (read: mostly pointless) reforms the Republicans were proposing as well as some more rational reforms, the right-wing hype machine started red-lining (as in tachometers, not the racist housing policy, though I guess that could also work since they really didn’t want that black man living in that house) and you’d have thought we had an actual communist overthrow of the government on our hands. The democrats absolutely bungled the PR (the more things change, the more they stay the same, huh) and pissed off everyone outside the party and made everyone inside the party facepalm. After the supermajority disappeared, the republicans started cynically abusing the filibuster and turned the rest of Obama’s presidency into anything from a lame duck to just one (republican caused) crisis after another.

Tl;Dr a lot of the democrats aren’t progressives, and we had a lot more of the old cold war blue dog crowd that Biden is from than we do now, mixed with absolutely bunglefucking both the political strategy and PR around the ACA and not being able to get past the filibuster once the supermajority disappeared.

P.S. it’s worth noting that, at the time, Roe was considered settled law. From what I recall, nobody was too anxious about the SCOTUS citing 400 year old witch hunters and overturning pretty well settled and accepted case law. The republicans were generally seeking to overturn Roe via the federal legislature/executive at the time.

K1nsey6,
@K1nsey6@lemmy.world avatar

Roe was never considered settled law, which is why there has been numerous bills written to codify it into law. The longest standing one has been Barbara Boxers Freedom of choice act written in 2003 which kept getting shelved by Pelosi every year it was introduced, including 2009 when Obama promised he would sign it his first day in office

conditional_soup, (edited )

Thanks for this. I wasn’t aware of that. All of my experience around Roe was seeing republicans wanting it dealt with in the legislature/executive.

Gotta love Pelosi, just when the Democrats are in danger of not spilling the spaghetti, she reliably shows up to make a disaster of it. She’s got, like, the anti-McConnel*.

*McConnel is, imo, one of the most talented statesmen of my lifetime. It’s a goddamn shame he’s used his talents for evil. It’s a little bewildering to imagine how different a place the US could be if he’d been on the side of the people. It’s also a powerful statement of what a wreck the GOP has become that Mitch couldn’t control the MAGA/freedom caucus members anymore. I hope the whole thing just implodes on itself and we get something new and less horrible.

Illuminostro,

Mitch McConnell.

Agent641,

Mitch “Disassociating is my hobby” McConnel

someguy3,

Too many people think the world can turn on a dime. It can’t. Things take time.

Cryophilia,

Longer than four months anyway, which is how long dems had full control

RagingHungryPanda,

The term for it is the ratchet effect. There’s a ton of videos on it, but here’s the one by second thought that I learned the phrase from: youtu.be/6LPuKVG1teQ?si=4hiE7jdj5MLrTTVh

DessertStorms,
DessertStorms avatar

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/22/american-democracy-was-never-designed-to-be-democratic

https://truthout.org/articles/fascism-is-possible-not-in-spite-of-liberal-capitalism-but-because-of-it/

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/

Aux,

Because in a two party system both parties are just sides of the same coin.

neidu2, (edited )

Because back then the democratic party didn’t really tow the party line as well as republicans. They’ve gotten better at it, but still behind. When the R voted NO in unison on most things championed by Obama, D couldn’t be relied upon to counter with enough YES votes. The party was too fractured, and while they still kind of are, they at least present a somewhat unified front nowadays.

jordanlund,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Because “control” doesn’t mean much in the Senate unless you have 60 votes to break a filibuster.

PhlubbaDubba,

And that they’ll actually follow through with breaking that filibuster,

Fuckin’ Manchin and Sinema, the fuckin’ bootlicking little tagnuts.

TheUncannyObserver,

Because Democrats aren’t progressives, and maintaining the status quo is good for them. They get easy paychecks from lobby groups, and don’t have to fight too hard for anything. And if something bad happens, like Roe v. Wade, they can use it as fodder to get reelected. It’s not really in their best interests to work on making things better, at least from a personal financial standpoint.

mydude, (edited )

Regarding roe, this pretty much explains it:

The first thing I’ll do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act m.youtube.com/watch?v=BdrOrwmk78Y

Im pro choice m.youtube.com/watch?v=nmzdkAbu8dY

Not my highest priority m.youtube.com/watch?v=RxiDZejZFjg

parody… No m.youtube.com/watch?v=1z4uhxpOnN0

7oo7,

Cult members sure dislike it when their team’s truth is put out in open.

mydude,

In short, they didn’t want to. The reality is they are all moderate republicans, which in itself is an oxymoron. Don’t believe me, here is Obama saying just that; m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJIlZxHfclc Now imagine you somehow get total control of all braches, and to top it off 3 weeks filibuster proof. You can do anything, but you don’t really want change. What do you do? Well implement RomneyCare, call it ObamaCare and leave out the public option, which will ensure it be a giveaway to big pharma. Seems good at first glance, but leaving out the public option really killed it, as they intended.

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