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Home Front: Politix
Obama Fundamentally Transformed Our Two-Party System
2020-02-10
[AmGreatness] The outcome of 2020 is not yet settled, obviously, but these two presidential election contests taken together already tell an amazing story.

The Democrat-Republican establishment had 2016 all planned out. According to the plan, 2016 would be another Clinton-Bush election, this time Jeb(!) versus Hillary. Hillary would win of course, and politics would return to normal. The majority party Democrats would keep pushing for bigger and more unaffordable government, the minority party Republicans would continue their project of steadily losing the fight, and the establishmentarians on both sides would continue feathering their nests.

But back to normal was not to be. Obama changed the game in ways the political establishment did not quite understand. What Obama did was the American political equivalent of walking on water; he had quite openly rejected America, and yet he was rewarded with a two-term presidency! As a result, it was not clear that politics in America was ever going to return to normal‐and in any case, there was no chance 2016 was going to be a return to normal.
Posted by:746

#13  *2020
Posted by: Lex   2020-02-10 17:07  

#12  Transformed.

A new historical era began in 2016, or 2920 if you prefer. That marked the end of virtue-signaling Globalism, the bankruptcy its soaring and absurd pretensions and its corrupt underside.

After the 2008 meltdown there was no way that either of our Globalist parties could maintain the fiction any longer - i.e. the fairytale that building up China, shipping our manufacturing base and wealth and jobs over to China, exporting jobs to Mexico and importing unemployment and shit-wage helots in return, and incompetently waging land wars in Asia - no one could pretend any longer that these colossal own goals were somehow in America's national interest.

The Uniparty was finished. Zero's farcical admin was its death rattle.

There is no going back to country-club, free trade, finance-driven Global Grifter GOP capitalism of the sort that enriches the Bush-Romney-Bloomberg GOPpers and nobody else.
Posted by: Lex   2020-02-10 17:06  

#11  If a party had folks who Washington elites approved of but the voters had to hold their noses because the guys were better than the Democrats... if that party suddenly elected someone they actually liked would it be fair to say the party had transformed? Or that it was perverted for years and finally came back to its roots.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2020-02-10 13:52  

#10  Transform? Euphemisms for destroy, ruin, tyranny, corrupt? The writer is too kind.
Posted by: JohnQC   2020-02-10 09:25  

#9  * swap petty thieves for Global ones
Posted by: Lex   2020-02-10 07:07  

#8  Newspeak.

"Fundamentally transform" = swap one group of (petty) thieves for another i.e. Global Grifters: Clintons & Giustra, C. Slim et al; Kerry and his Persian pal & Persian in-laws; the Bidens; ValJar and Big Mike; Shalala at United Health; etc etc etc
Posted by: Lex   2020-02-10 07:06  

#7  You never Fundamentally Transform what You Love

Never been married, newc? Well, at least they (womenfolk) say they love you.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-02-10 06:56  

#6  Agreed. Obama was a nullity, a cipher, a hollow man in a slim-cut suit. Everyone saw what he wanted to see in that empty vessel.

His real legacy wasn't what he did but what, through his laziness neglect and sheer ignorance, this Zero enabled: Grifting on a global scale, not least by his two Secretaries of State and their coteries.

Also by market-manipulating firms on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.

No responsible, honest and competent US administration of any political orientation would have allowed Google to acquire Doubleclick, as Zero's GOOG-infested crony administration did. The Zero admin was a fat piñata for Google and Goldman Sachs.
Posted by: Lex   2020-02-10 06:53  

#5  IMO, Obama was just the icing on the cake. His strongest effect on Donks is "If we can elect, and reelect, somebody like this - we can do anything!"
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-02-10 06:43  

#4  What BP said. Uniparty. Same sugar H2O junk. One wears Pepsi blue, other wears Coke red.
Posted by: Lex   2020-02-10 06:17  

#3  2 party?

2 brands, one party.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2020-02-10 04:37  

#2  I would reckon this Mercer article may represent the model Soetoro employed:

What Americans Can Learn from F. W. de Klerk’s Great Betrayal of South Africa
Posted by: Besoeker   2020-02-10 04:34  

#1  You never Fundamentally Transform what You Love.

Asshole.
Posted by: newc   2020-02-10 02:17  

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