I think the spell is finally broken...

[Daysnconfuddled]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/

2020 was a good election for him to lose. If he'd won - and he came very close - he'd have spent two years minimum bogged down by Covid, and had an administration full of people who hated him and were undermining everything he tried to do.

Now he's nominated a cabinet many of whom are under 45. Vance is only 40. That's a bench of future candidates. And they either believe in the populist agenda or they know they have to pretend to believe in it.

The Democrats haven't had a real competitive primary since Obama beat Hillary in 2008, and boy does it show. There haven't been breakout candidates in recent cycles. It blows my mind that Nancy Pelosi (84) is still arguably the biggest power broker in the party.

A president following through on his promises is quite a thing. Maybe future presidents should take note.

The democrats gave trump an open goal. Which makes me wonder how the democrats got so lost that they were happy to sacrifice women's rights. Or maybe they didn't give a shit about women's rights to begin with. They certainly don't seem to understand what lost them the election.

Obama got in due to funding by the Pritzkers. This is a long game for them.

As it goes losing then winning is working out more for him, I agree

Also on the Pelosi point

I understand that he might well have failed had he tried, (I think I remember that happening to Bill Clinton). But I don't understand how Obama wouldn't have known when he made that promise that he was unlikely to succeed.

If he had said , 'I will do my very best to get this done but it might not be possible' I wouldn't have an issue.

Or even if he had said once President, 'I know I promised but it's not going to be possible now, I am sorry' I'd have been mightily pissed off but at least I could have respected the honesty.

As far as I'm aware he did neither.

I know there are some Democrat supporters who don't like talking about this because Obama is a hero to them but, from where I'm sitting (admittedly on the other side of the pond) he let women down badly.

And sidenote - he goaded Trump into standing in the first place.

As far as I recall he sacrificed it to get Medicare through. Weren't deals done to get that that through the senate and part of deal was not bringing an abortion bill?

I might be wrong but I'm sure choosing medicare over abortion was cited of one of the reasons. Or maybe it was an excuse and he didn't try hard enough.

This ⬆️ (and the comment from @selffellatingouroborosofhate )

I don't know if I'd have voted for Trump if I was in the US IRL - I suspect I'd have been one of the many frustrated Democrats voters who seem to have stayed at home this time.

But in the thought experiment world, I can be a single issue voter and I'll have Trump. This particular single issue and the rest of the EO that contained it is fundamental to bringing an end to the medical experimentation on children and young people. There are measures in there to end the promotion of gender identity belief in schools and this line alone suggests the beginning of the end of medical interventions:

Agencies shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the Federal funding of gender ideology

I appreciate most medical transition in the US is privately funded but for children, organisations like Planned Parenthood have played a key role. According to this, they get 40% of their funding from the (federal, I assume) government:

https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-government-money-does-planned-parenthood-receive/#:~:text=Planned%20Parenthood%20receives%20money%20from,X%20Family%20Planning%20Services%20Program.

Edited to add: I haven't RTFT and am just catching up on the most recent two pages. Apologies if this point on government funding has already been raised.

Yes I believe he made that choice and I understand why he made it. My point is that, as a politician who understood the US system, he must have known beforehand that his chances of getting both Medicare and abortion rights through would be next to none, even with a supermajority. And yet he still went ahead, made that promise and, as far as I know, has never apologised for not keeping it.

Like I've said already, I wonder how many women voted for him on the basis of that promise?

Medicare - the federally funded scheme that supports healthcare for the elderly and people with disabilities - has existed in the US since the mid 1960s. Obama’s Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was a separate piece of legislation aimed at making medical insurance more accessible to people on lower incomes (Medicaid was the previous version of this, also established in the 1960s). The ACA actually diverted some funding from Medicare, which was one if the objections to it.
Abortion services could not be covered by federal monies under the ACA, as Congress wouldn’t have passed the ACA if they were included.
That’s my (somewhat limited) understanding, at least.

Thanks for the correction, yes The Affordable Care Act. My point, that he must surely have known beforehand that he'd never get them both through, remains.

It does seem to me more generally that Obama (thus far) seems to have a remarkably comfy ride from commentators. Despite being the great liberal hope, he didn't actually do that much that was liberal ASAIK, still presided over American involvement in foreign wars etc. And I suppose you could say, shaped the useless Democratic Party we now see before us. With the help of the charmless Pritzkers.

It does seem to me more generally that Obama (thus far) seems to have a remarkably comfy ride from commentators.

Disclaimer that I'm on the younger side and wasn't a politically engaged adult for most of Obama's two runs.

I think Obama benefitted enormously from coming across as calm, controlled and charismatic. To the average observer (across the Pond at least) he radiated a sense of stability, which is certainly very appealing for non-Americans.

A poor presentation is definitely a huge disadvantage for a president - Biden could barely string sentences together, and Trump's bluster, horrible fake tan and lack of filter makes him seem odious to at least half of Americans and most of the non-American world.

I think you can get away with a surprising amount policy-wise if you're good-looking, smile a lot and look like you can be trusted with the nuclear codes.

To be fair, I don't think Obama's supermajority lasted very long and, as I remember, he was very limited in what he could do after that. My issue is more about whether or not the Democrats (not just Obama) have used abortion rights as a campaign issue to leverage votes, while knowing full well that they were highly unlikely to be able to deliver.

I find I naturally shy away from assuming that the Democrats use it as a cynical wedge, butI think that's probably me being, not quite naive, but disinclined to think the worst of people. But certainly that seems to be the kind of calculation that goes on when they strategize - ok, how will we keep this demographic voting for us, kind of thing.

I agree Obama seems to get an easy ride, and especially outside of the US. I'm sometimes surprised to find the extent to which people in the UK assume everything he did was golden.

He has seriously fucked up with this election cycle, IMO. He is really not reading the room.

The Obama bros on Pod Save America are fascinating at the moment because they still won't admit the party got anything wrong - to listen to them, they had a great campaign, a great candidate, popular policies, and it's still a mystery to them why they lost.

A great account will be written soon enough about how the Democrats fucked up. I'm watching Amie Parnes, who was getting lots of leaks from the Harris campaign. She co-wrote that brilliant book "Shattered", all about the Hillary campaign.

It's interesting because the authors were embedded reporters with the campaign, obviously wanted her to win, but ended up recording how massively dysfunctional it all was. Trump barely appears in the book except as an offstage villain. There are regular moments where Bill Clinton wanders in, asks a smart question or gives sensible advice, and everyone ignores him.

A contact who follows these things says you could tell Hillary would lose because of the people around her. Bill Clinton had James Carville, Bush had Karl Rove, Obama had David Axelrod - love them or hate them, they're very clever and skilled political streetfighters. Trump has a few people like that. Hillary had a bunch of Brooklyn soyboys who thought they were the masters of the universe.

I don't know who Harris had.

I haven't read 'Shattered' but my DIL is American and she and my DS live on the East Coast. She is a Democrat to her core, but I remember her telling me that people outside of the US don't realise how despised the Clintons were inside the US by 2016. They were considered to be corrupt and interested only in lining their own pockets.

For sure. The funny thing is, I object to Bill Clinton on principle because the man has the morals of an alley cat, but he often seems to be the only person in the party who thinks they need to appeal to the median voter. Instead of putting him onstage at fundraisers and ignoring his advice, it might be better to keep him out of view but listen to his advice.

Is there anyone in the Democratic party that you think is worth keeping an eye on? Anyone that seems to 'get' what went wrong and has the political skills to turn it around ?

The Democratic Party are a classic example of Brecht's dictum that

"would it not be simpler,
If the government simply dissolved the people
And elected another?"

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez seems worth keeping an eye on, though she's a relative newcomer without much of a national profile.

I have some fondness for Ruben Gallego, because he's a relative left winger who got elected senator in a Trump state, and banned his staff from saying 'Latinx'.

They're not very good at dealing with internal critics. That's why Trump's incoming cabinet is going to be full of former Democrats. But you have to think at some point reality can't be denied.

Thanks for those names. I will read up on them and discuss with my DIL.

That's why Trump's incoming cabinet is going to be full of former Democrats

I did not realise this. That is very interesting🤔

After the election someone tweeted a picture from a victory party of Trump, Musk, Tulsi Gabbard and Bobby Kennedy with the comment "looks like the Democrats won"

Some truth in that 😉

Trump's a former Democrat himself, of course.

Something I knew ... and then forgot! Thank you for the memory jog. We live in interesting times.