Son of Mathonwy wrote:Apparently Obama missed the perfect chance to fix Roe vs Wade in statute, and other vital things in his first 2 years:
When Obama took office, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. In the states, Democrats controlled more legislatures than Republicans did; more states had a Democratic trifecta (Democratic governors plus both state legislative bodies) than a Republican one. There was a brief moment here to get a lot done in the name of both democracy and women’s rights: get rid of the undemocratic Electoral College; codify Roe; rescind the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal Medicaid dollars from funding abortions for poor women, and the Helms Amendment, which bars US funding from paying for abortions for women overseas. Advocates asked the Obama administration to do all of that; they did none.
If there is one moment that portended all of what we’re seeing today, it was Bush v. Gore in 2001. Democrats had a chance to correct it. They had a base that was livid about what had happened, and a country primed to accept a “one person, one vote” rule for elections. And despite a huge win in 2008, they did absolutely nothing to prevent such an undemocratic result from happening again.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... roe-v-wade
Obviously he had his hands full with the Credit Crunch and Obamacare (if I recall correctly), but missing the chance to get rid of the Electoral College was catastrophic.
Yeah, Obama used all of his political power attempting to fix the American healthcare system (I think I read somewhere that he only had 42 days available when he had a supermajority (enough to pass even with a filibuster) with various senators being off sick, etc). Which was laudable and has no doubt made a huge difference to the American quality of life, but in hindsight wasn't the best use of it. If he had gone hard on the electoral system - removing the electoral college, making DC and Puerto Rico states, he would've earned himself lasting enmity and would've faced accusations of "It's not fair, he's using power to tilt future elections toward the Democrats!", but he would have levelled the playing field quite substatially and eased the path, not only to his own re-election, but to future progressive changes. There might not have been Obamacare in 2008, but there wouldn't've been a President Trump in 2016 through the electoral college, so swings and roundabouts.
Hindsight's a wonderful thing though - many would've regarded such actions as "playing dirty" back then, with no idea of the amount of dirtiness that Republicans would be willing to stoop to in order to keep power.
Puja
