"The Democrats’ fecklessness, in other words, did not flourish in a partisan vacuum. It has been, at every juncture, inspired and influenced by the complete failure of the right to self-police. The American right, like the housing market and the banks and the hedge funds and the health insurers and providers, simply could not be induced to check its basest instincts in the face of an opponent that staked its entire political credibility on the promise that it could make Republicans fall in line with realigned incentives or One Weird Trick. If liberals want to get the next decade right, after the previous one in which we repeatedly failed to save the world while telling ourselves we were doing so, we will need to stop nudging and begin fighting."Obama brought knives to gun fights for eight years as president. Deep down, he's an obviously intelligent and well-meaning guy who thought, as many left-of-center folks still do, that our inherited "small-D" democratic institutions could (would?) save us. I mean, if only that kindly Joe Biden becomes president or that Nice Young Man Pete Buttigieg, I'm sure Republicans will ease their stranglehold on the Senate and go back to working in good faith with Dems on a bipartisan basis, right?
And yes, the ACA was an objective, hard-fought victory. But we either move forward to stronger forms of national healthcare, or simply lose it all the next time Republicans run the House. There are no longer permanent victories for Democrats. With an extremist right-wing Supreme Court, a President Warren (still my favorite, fwiw) or Sanders could simply have a relatively progressive agenda go through Congress (with 50 votes in the Senate) wiped out by judicial fiat.
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