Reply #62: He didn't try though -- That is the key

[Armstead]

No, he could not have been expected to change everything overnight. But he seemed to at least be ready to begin the pushback to the corporate CONservative dominance.

But instead of using a combination of political hardball and the bully pulpit to really push for popular reforms, Obama did the opposite. He either failed to support, or actively suppressed, liberals and progressives, and instead threw his weight behind the conmservaDems.


When you look at the overall trajectory of health care, for example, he started from a position of placating Corporate Healthcare and the conservaDems. The proponents of meaningful reform had to start with the weak compromise of a "public option" which was unclear.

So reformers compromised from the beginning but were pushed away from the table from the beginning. Obama gave lkip service to a public option and/or a possible slight expansion of Medicare.

And the bar kept getting lowered to a weaker and weaker public option and then -- to add insult to injury -- a MANDATE THAT REQUIRES PEOPLE TO BUY OVERPRICED CORPORATE HEALTH INSURANCE.

Rather than set out a set of principles and doing some LBJ style armtwisting of anti-reform conservadems, he basically empowered and catered to those conmservaDems while pressuring (and often insulting) the advocates of real reform inside and outside of Congreess.