THE OBAMA/DEMOCRAT/LEFT LEGACY

When President Barack Obama took office in January, 2009, he was accompanied by 60% Democrat majorities in both the house and senate, and a majority of state Governors.  Democrats were in full control of the country.

Mr. Obama happily accepted this dominance and told us he was going to “transform the country”.

So how did the country react to this “transformation”?

In answer, I am posting excerpts from a bluntly written article by the  Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty, John Wagner and Tom Hamburger – one which, I assure you, they took no pleasure in writing:

The biggest stain on Barack Obama’s political legacy may turn out to be the decimation of the Democratic Party on his watch.

The 2016 election has brought a moment of reckoning — and a new era to the party.

Democrats have been shut out of power in Washington, with the White House and both chambers of Congress in GOP control starting in January. In state houses across the country, their ranks have been decimated.

Meanwhile, the party has also been hollowed out in state capitals across the country. Where Democrats held 29 governorships when Obama was inaugurated, they can count only 15 in the wake of Tuesday’s election. In 2017, Republicans could tie the record for controlling governorships, which is 34, set in 1922 when Warren Harding was president. (One governor is an independent, and a recount is possible in North Carolina, where the Democrat has a narrow lead.)

During the Obama presidency, more than 900 Democratic state legislators were defeated.

On Tuesday, Republicans picked up additional legislative chambers, and continued to make gains in state houses, with 24 states now having the “trifecta” control of both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion. The victories for the GOP Tuesday included picking up the Kentucky House for the first time in almost a century and gaining control of the Iowa Senate.

For almost 8 years, mainstream media have largely seconded Barack Obama and Democrats’ claims that his presidency was a major success.  We were told that:

-The economy was humming along beautifully, that he reduced the national debt – which zoomed upward during his presidency and “reduced” by trickling back down to where it was in the first place.

-That he reduced unemployment – which zoomed over 10% during his first year, stayed over 9% during his second year,  and eventually dropped to about 5% due to a boom in primarily low-paying second-job quality work and so many people no longer trying to find jobs that the participation rate went to a 40 year low.

-That the “stimulus package” would  create millions of “shovel-ready jobs” which never materialized.

That ObamaCare would enable us to keep our own doctors and save, on average, $2,500 per family per year, which never happened.

-That in foreign policy Mr. Obama had great success “leading from behind”, and that the Iran deal was a great move forward.

Do I misstate?  If so, how did Republicans go from being a disastrous majority in both houses of congress to running them?  In state politics, how did the number of Democrats lose half their Governors?  How did they make enormous gains in control of state legislative bodies?

If that were not enough proof that the Democrat party is falling apart, let’s talk Donald Trump.

Trump, a political novice with enormous personal and financial baggage, and the sophistication level of a hungry coyote, won the presidency this week over the polished, scripted, essence of political correctness, Hillary Clinton.

How did he doe it?  Essentially by telling us that he would undo everything Barack Obama, and his media acolytes, considered his greatest successes.

In other words, by telling us that the Obama/Democrat legacy, which was carefully, painstakingly built over the past 8 years, would be deposited in the nearest dumpster.

Does this mean that Republicans will remain dominant for any period of time? Not it does not.  Maybe they will and maybe they won’t.

But what it does mean, is that Democrats had better think long and hard about who they are and what they need to tell the electorate…and it better be a helluva lot different than more of the same.