Our national debt has skyrocketed since he took office. Obviously, Bush increased the deficit as well, but under the Obama administration, our debt has doubled; we cannot sustain this kind of debt. Eventually, open market operations can only take us so far.
The pull out of Iraq was a disaster. We should have never been there, but he handled it terribly. Libya and Egypt were handled even worse. Led to radical Islam taking over both countries!
Obamacare is a disaster. It needs to be repealed and replaced.
Our racial divisions are worse than they've been since the 60's and his leadership throughout has been abysmal.
Yes, the economy was a mess when he took office, but this has been the slowest recovery since the Great Depression. Record numbers of people who have dropped out of the work force.
I could go on and on...
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I'll let this concise post from thomhartman.com respond about the national debt:
If you listen and watch conservative media - you'll see that the latest talking point is that "Obama's doubled the national debt during this presidency" They repeat it over and over again. It renders liberals speechless. Here's the proper response:
For starters, it's not true. The day Obama took office the debt was 10.626 trillion. It's now at 18.150 trillion. And while he has added 70.2% - it's not double. And it get's better. How much money has the federal gov't spent since he bacame president on ALL expenses related to the illegal and unfortunate decision to invade Iraq. I don't know the answer to this - but I would guess it's in the 1.5 - 2 trillion range. Subtract that from the 18.150 and you have one of the best stewardship's of the budget since Jimmy Carter.
Here's the best arguement. When a conserveative brings up the doubling of the debt - ask them if by doubling the debt would that automactically make them a terrible president. They'll say it does. And they'll say it with passion because they think that Obama is the only modern president to double the debt (even though this is complete lie). Then hit them with this. The day Ronald Reagan was sworn in - the national debt was 934 billion. The day he left office the debt was 2. 697 trillion. Almost TRIPLE. Bush 41 added over 80% and Bush 43 added 110%.
And speaking of Reagan - point out that when you blow up the federal budget by dramatically increasing defence spending and dramatically lowering taxes to the rich - you get the largest increase in deficit spending in the past 70 years. Does this sound familiar? Every republican now running for president wants to do the same.
I'll add to that that I don't understand how you can claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility while at the same time advocating defaulting on the national debt. I don't know if you advocated for that yourself, but a significant number of congresspeople and senators in your party did.
As for Iraq, as you said, we never should've gone in, and I think there's an argument to be made that the fallout would've been similar whenever we got out. Were we supposed to stay there indefinitely to prevent the region from being unstable? I think not. Foreign policy is perhaps the most complex and difficult area of politics and of governance, there are so many moving parts, so many players, so many impossible decisions, that I think to to say ISIS is Obama's fault is dangerously simplistic.
All these Republicans say that the ACA should be repealed and replaced. With what? Replaced with what? I've yet to hear a satisfactory answer to that. It's just vague descriptions of vouchers and personal health savings accounts and open healthcare markets with no explanation of how you're going to ensure that the insurance companies continue to cover all pre-existing conditions while also ensuring that costs don't get higher than they already are.
The individual mandate wasn't Obama's idea, it was the price the insurance companies required in order to cover all pre-existing conditions, otherwise they either wouldn't make a profit(this is why health insurance shouldn't be a for-profit industry) or prices would go way up. You get rid of the ACA and tell the insurance companies to still cover pre-existing conditions, they're going to say, 'not without guaranteeing that everyone signs up' and then you're going to be on the way back to the ACA. So I'm not sure what the GOP plan for replacing the ACA really is.
For the record, I favor a single-payer system where the government picks up the tab over what we have, but what we have is much better than anything I've heard the GOP propose to replace it. Tell all the people who have healthcare now that didn't before that it's a disaster. Tell the people whose lives have been saved because of it that it's a disaster.
And all that's happened racially is we elected a black president and it awoke and intensified racism in certain segments of the country and it's let to some very unfortunate results, and too many outright tragedies. But I really have a hard time understanding how you're going to blame the president for that. It feels like blaming the victim to me.
Anyway, I think I'll stop there, because I think we're probably not changing each other's minds.
