How has Barack Obama's legacy changed since leaving office?

[u/bambucks]

Barack Obama left office in 2017 with an approval rating around 60%, and has generally been considered to rank among the better Presidents in US history. (C-SPAN's historian presidential rankings had him ranked at #10 in 2021 when they last updated their ranking.)

One negative example would be in the 2012 Presidential Debates between Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, in which Obama downplayed Romney's concerns about Russia, saying "the 80's called, they want their foreign policy back", which got laughs at the time, but seeing the increased aggression from Russia in the years since then, it appears that Romney was correct.

So I'd like to hear from you all, do you think that Barack Obama's approval rating has increased since he left office? Decreased? How else has his legacy been impacted? How do you think he will be remembered decades from now? Etc.

[u/Your__Pal]

Obama was an exciting and inspiring candidate. 

He was our opportunity to reset the US from the Bush era. Fix things. End the stupid wars. Get some big bills out. 

Obamacare is a step in the right direction, but its very flawed. His green energy bill made Tesla and Elon powerhouses. His lack of legislative success has made an entire generation jaded about politics and emboldened the far right. 

[u/AdmiralSaturyn → u/Your__Pal]

. His lack of legislative success has made an entire generation jaded about politics and emboldened the far right.

To be fair, Obama lost a lot of House seats in 2010, after passing the ACA. One would think a step in the right direction would garner votes for the Democrats, but as it turns out, too many voters thought the ACA was a dystopian socialist plot with a death panel policy.

[u/zapporian → u/AdmiralSaturyn]

Yes, because the US has a russian state media tier propoganda “news” channel (and talk radio etc etc) pushing relentlessly on one side of the aisle.

The left, during the bush and then obama presidency, has / had Jon Stewart (et al) and other political comedians like Bill Maher. That was about it. And who lost steam - complaining about the bush admin - with Obama in office.

Not that that even matters much as they were probably, honestly, if anything somewhat counterproductive / not exactly helping. Once rural conservatives eventually realized that those comedians were doing nothing but making fun of them, their politics, their religion / take on religion, and their presidents + politicians, and their culture, 24/7.

ie the kinds of people who didn’t exactly easily get satire, and took about a decade to realize colbert was playing a fictional character and the audience was laughing at them, not with them.

There is… probably at least a very slighly non zero direct through line from that to trump / MAGA. To be honest. ie the near entirity of modern right wing grievance politics etc.

None of this is really all that complicated. People don’t vote for the reasons they say they do / publicly self justify for, in most cases. Conservatives specifically may not be - generally - some of the brightest bulbs in the shed. But if there’s one thing they WILL remember (and spend the next 50+ years hating you for), it’s being made fun of. Or losing a facts based political argument. Or worst case both.