Reply #2: It really depends on your view on the structural impediments to change, historically and currently.

[BzaDem]

From my perspective, political history teaches us that any change in the progressive direction is very difficult, even with a Democratic President and our majorities (which happen to be small compared to LBJ/FDR's majorities). In a sense, any significant change in the progressive direction is a major accomplishment in and of itself, and would place Obama in history as a President that did more for progressive causes than any President since LBJ. And since the change Obama has enacted certainly rivals the change of LBJ, I am of course ecstatic at the results.

However, the Obama critics here look at this differently. They believe history teaches us that progressive change is not difficult with our majorities, and that Obama is simply making a voluntary choice not to move the country in as progressive a direction as they want. They therefore compare Obama's change not to the previous status quo, but rather to their optimal policy. Instead of looking at each accomplishment as a positive step that we are fortunate to have (given the structural impediments to change), they look at each non-accomplishment (relative to their vision) as a reason to criticize the Obama presidency in general terms. And furthermore, some (though not all) take obvious monumental accomplishments and claim they are not only not accomplishments, but actually take us in the wrong direction.

As far as the history is concerned, I simply believe they are wrong, and that this is relatively easily shown. So if they were to convince me that Obama's presidency has been a failure, they would first need to produce new historical evidence I have not seen (or a plausible reinterpretation of historical evidence I have seen) that shows that change is somehow easy, even with our majorities. They would also need to connect this to today, with an analysis of our current structural impediments to change and how they relate to those of history. This is purely a historical/structural/objective matter.

But I don't see those kinds of posts. I just see more and more posts saying "Obama did NOT do this, therefore his presidency is sub-par." Without any historical evidence of the form mentioned above, this kind of post is wrong to me on its face. It doesn't matter what the "this" is -- it is simply incorrect. Given the positive accomplishments that have occurred, the lack of additional positive accomplishments is not reason to describe the presidency as a failure, as general matter.

In addition, as for the separate "question" as to whether Obama's legislative accomplishments actually move us in the right direction, most of the posts I have seen claiming otherwise are full of evidence that the OP does not actually understand the legislation passed. Most contain many factual inaccuracies related to the bills. So someone who cannot accurately discuss the bills is certainly not going to convince me of their point of view. Beyond that, I still doubt it is possible to make a convincing case that the bills actually move us in the wrong direction. I could absolutely be convinced that the relative magnitude of his accomplishments are less than I thought. But for people who think what he accomplished is not actually an accomplishment, I think the gulf is too wide to be bridged (similar to the gulf between my ideology and the Republican ideology is likely too wide to be bridged).