Hillary 2016: How she transformed Democrats into “new” Republicans

[andym]

179. He rarely took the bully pulpit for anything

including the ACA-- and he did that only a few times and weakly. That was the biggest disappointment-- not using the bully pulpit effectively. It's clear that he saw the passage of the ACA as being the "revolutionary change", and didn't realize how the lack of a public option would hamstring it.

In fact, in his first year he did not really use his political capitol as much nor as forcefully as he could. President Obama wanted the ACA and then looked for consensus-- he allowed Lieberman and Nelson to push him around in the Senate. Pres. Obama always looks for consensus-- which is both practical and very limiting at the same time-- his desire to get things done sometimes moved the arrow in the wrong direction-- we're very lucky that the GOP has been so intransigent and mostly refused to engage him.

His biggest problem was that the one person who could actually have exerted pressure on both him (the President) and the Senate died too early-- Ted Kennedy. I am convinced that Obama's fist term would look very different if Kennedy did not die in such an untimely fashion. Kennedy with all his faults, was really the liberal lion that I hope Bernie can become.