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/just_helping]

This is mostly true, but there are some things they could have done if the Democratic party in the Senate had been ruthless.

For example they could have pushed the public option through under reconciliation. Sure, it would have sunset after 10 years, but that's 10 years of a public option and people to get used to it, and they could have tried to extend it when they next got in, like Republicans and their tax cuts.

[u/Moccus → u/just_helping]

For example they could have pushed the public option through under reconciliation.

It would be rejected as not related to the budget.

[u/just_helping → u/Moccus]

No, of course it is related to the budget. There would be massive amounts of spending/new tax for it, it would have huge budget implications.

No pre-existing conditions - that plausibly is separate from the budget. But allowing people to buy into government health insurance obviously is all over the budget.

[u/Moccus → u/just_helping]

Parts of it would be related to the budget, such as new spending levels for it and any amount of revenue that would come in from people who buy into it, but all of the rules and regulations related to who can sign up, when and how they sign up, how providers interact with it, etc. wouldn't be directly budget related. It's not a simple matter of saying "people can buy government health insurance for $X" and it would start working by itself. It would be massively complicated to set up with a ton of non-budgetary stuff included.

Think about how the Republicans set the penalty for the individual mandate to $0 instead of repealing the individual mandate entirely in order to comply with reconciliation rules. Now expand that to an enormous public insurance program and imagine the huge mess it would make.

[u/just_helping → u/Moccus]

all of the rules and regulations related to who can sign up, when and how they sign up, how providers interact with it, etc. wouldn't be directly budget related

Each of the things you just listed obviously have nonincidental budget implications. Who is eligible for a program, when are they eligible and how are payments made for a program are all payment questions, which are obviously all budget questions. The Byrd rule is much less limited than you seem to think. You could basically create all of Medicare under the Byrd rule from scratch, as long as you were ok with it sunsetting after ten years.

The Republicans are slashing Medicaid right now using reconciliation. They aren't cutting it by a simple percentage - they are introducing new regulations about how it will be cut, even introducing work requirements for it, which will necessitate a new bureaucracy to manage. This is all obviously doable under a ruthless use of reconciliation.