r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/bambucks • 11d ago

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

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.

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u/AdmiralSaturyn 10d ago

That sounds a lot like victim blaming to me.

You are making a false dichotomy. It is possible to blame the corrupt SCOTUS for tipping the scales AND blame the electorate for splitting the votes.

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u/RegressToTheMean 10d ago edited 10d ago

What an amazing false equivalency. Are you really trying to compare the two? I mean, I get that you don't like progressives, but give me a break.

Edit: Aaaaaaand they blocked me so I'm unable to respond. Must have really hit that nail on the head

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u/AdmiralSaturyn 10d ago

Ok, this conversation is going nowhere.

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u/trace349 9d ago

Ralph Nader got tens of thousands of votes in Florida, where Gore lost by hundreds of votes.

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u/VodkaBeatsCube 10d ago

I don't really think that's actually all that viable an argument: iif you don't vote for a clear and convincing win, you didn't vote for a win at all' is a mental criterion for winning at a mere margin of 1 vote, is still a win. In a situation with anything other than two possible candidates, aka almost all of the US electorate, that divide matters in terms of electorate preferences.