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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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Romney ran a bad campaign on what could have been a winnable election. Obama is still viewed fawningly by his supporters, but presided over a tremendous drop in elected Democratic officials nationwide. His presidency directly lead to the election of Trump. In exchange, liberals got... Obamacare?

Sotomayor, Kagan, and potentially Garland. Plus the various court victories and budget squabbles that benefited from a Democrat in office.

Obamacare was disappointing, but in a way which made it easy to demonize Republicans. “Real socialized healthcare has never been tried!” Neither Trump nor Biden really delivered on a corresponding promise. Maybe signature legislation is just unlikely in this political climate?

The Obama presidency definitely lead to the Tea Party, and from there maybe to Trump. There was also an interesting post in the old country which argued he specifically hollowed out the Democrat roster. I’m still reluctant to assign blame/credit for Trump, though. In the counterfactual where Trump had a heart attack before ever announcing his bid, I don’t see Republicans running anyone remotely comparable.

So, while there were legitimate issues with Obama and his team's larger running of the Democratic Party, it's important to remember that of the supposed 1,000 legislative seats lost, 150 were in NH alone (because NH is weird and has a massive 400 seat legislature with lots of weird swings), and a lot more were in rural Yellow Dog seats in places like Arkansas, Mississippi, and so forth that were basically doomed the moment they could be put in a flyer next to a black Democratic President in a way that wasn't true of John Kerry or Al Gore.

I would say the nomination of Hillary and James Comey's choices of what to announce and when is what led to the election of Trump, but I'm aware the latter is the minority position here.