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babylonsister

(171,074 posts) Mon Nov 7, 2016, 08:46 PM Nov 2016

Obama's Plan to Destroy America Has Failed Miserably

http://prospect.org/article/obamas-plan-destroy-america-has-failed-miserably

Obama's Plan to Destroy America Has Failed Miserably

Paul Waldman

November 7, 2016

Can't this guy do anything right?

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign event for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at Osceola County Stadium in Kissimmee, Florida, Sunday, November 6, 2016.

Barack Obama will be president for only two more months, and any judgment of his presidency will have to account for all he failed to accomplish. Consider this partial list of things Obama was supposed to do but never did:

Destroy America's image and influence in the world
Dismantle our military
Send us into a Greece-like debt spiral that would crash the economy
Institute a government takeover of all health care
Kill elderly and disabled people who had become a drain on the system
Transition the U.S. to communism
Outlaw Christianity
Reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine then use it as a tool to silence conservative media
Force gas prices up to $8 or $10 a gallon to make driving impossible
Open the borders to a flood of undocumented immigrants
Confiscate Americans' guns
Throw dissenters into concentration camps
Force whites to pay reparations to blacks in order to wreak vengeance for the sins of the past
Declare martial law and cancel the 2016 election so he could stay in office

snip//

So here we are, with just weeks to go. How's that plan working out? It appears that it has failed. Obama has overseen the creation of 15 million jobs since the bottom of the Great Recession a year after he took office. Inflation is all but nonexistent, wages are rising, and GDP growth is getting stronger. Gas is at around $2 a gallon, and America is practically energy-independent, due not only to an explosion in the development of renewables but also the spread of fracking, which has vastly increased domestic supplies of oil and natural gas (which somehow happened despite Obama's radical anti-fossil-fuel agenda).

And that's just the beginning. America is admired all over the world. The Affordable Care Act has some challenges, but it has given 20 million more people health insurance, slowed the rise in health-care spending, and brought unprecedented health security to Americans—without killing any old people and while leaving the bulk of the health-care system in private hands. Obama hasn't opened the borders; in fact, there are fewer undocumented immigrants in the U.S. today than there were when he took office. Those FEMA concentration camps were never set up, he didn't turn America communist, and he didn't confiscate anyone's guns. Christianity, as far as I can tell, is still legal.

snip//

But that's what Republicans have told their constituents to believe—and despite the fact that their dark predictions about the destruction Obama would wreak never came to pass, they'll be saying the same things about Clinton. In one recent poll of Florida voters, 40 percent of those voting for Donald Trump agreed with the assertion that Clinton is literally a demon. I wish that were a joke, but it isn't. Neither is this election, and neither is the next four years.