Did you forget how he wasted months of precious Congressional time by desperately trying to make the PPACA bipartisan? He let Republicans slow things down for months. He let them put all sorts of amendments into it. In the end, they all voted against it.
It’s important to put this into historical context… the world was different in 2008 - we still had McCain defending Obama against his most insane, racist supporters during the election. You could absolutely be forgiven at that time for taking most politicians at good faith that they had SOME kind of scruples or would do the right thing if push came to shove, and we know how absolutely naively batshit and wrong that was now, but it’s easy to say that now with the benefit of another 18 years of data.
It’s important to put this into historical context… the world was different in 2008 - we still had McCain defending Obama against his most insane, racist supporters during the election. You could absolutely be forgiven at that time for taking most politicians at good faith that they had SOME kind of scruples or would do the right thing if push came to shove, and we know how absolutely naively batshit and wrong that was now, but it’s easy to say that now with the benefit of another 18 years of data.