EDITORIAL FROM PROGRESSIVE POST DAILY:
Donald Trump Is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Barack Obama’s Legacy
100 days into Donald Trump’s presidency, President Obama’s legacy stands tall.
Donald Trump is the best thing that ever happened to Barack Obama’s legacy. Sounds like a strange idea, right? It goes against basic logic. Trump ran against essentially every one of Barack Obama’s policies and accomplishments – vowing to repeal them “on day one.”
But 100 days into his presidency, nothing could be more clear – Donald Trump is the best thing that ever happened to Barack Obama’s legacy.
For progressives, the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States felt like an existential risk for the progressive accomplishments of the Obama administration. And while Trump may still be an existential risk to the republic, Donald Trump has proven over and over again in his first 100 days that he is not the risk to progressivism that we had feared.
If anything Trump has energized the progressive movement in a way that even Barack Obama couldn’t.
But what Donald Trump has also done is prove just how consequential a president Barack Obama was.
Just think about it, President Obama will be sandwiched in history between George W. Bush and Donald Trump. That alone will make his presidency stand out and highlight his many, many accomplishments.
George W. Bush will be remembered for the catastrophe of the War in Iraq, the failure of the Hurricane Katrina response and of course the financial crisis and the Great Recession. His major legislative accomplishments were tax cuts for the wealthy – which were eventually rolled back by Barack Obama – and No Child Left Behind, his widely criticized education bill. Bush’s legislative accomplishments simply do not stand up against President Obama’s.
As for Donald Trump, by now we can safely say that the chaos that is Donald Trump is here to stay. The same recklessness, impulsiveness and total lack of attention to detail that was the hallmark of his campaign have followed him to the White House. And there is nothing in these first 100 days that indicates that Donald Trump is capable of changing. Unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump is simply incapable of being disciplined and thoughtful.
And on the 100th day of his presidency, Donald Trump has almost no successes to boast about.
The only significant accomplishment the administration can point to is the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. And while that is certainly consequential, Republicans had to blow up over 100 years of Senate tradition to get Trump one mediocre win in his first 100 days.
Other than Gorsuch, Trump has used executive orders to pull back some of Barack Obama’s environmental, equal rights and gun control accomplishments. And while those actions have real consequences, they are not consequential in terms of having a robust first 100 days for Trump to brag about. Many of the executive orders simply call on various government agencies to do research into reversing the Obama accomplishments.
Donald Trump’s attempt to repeal Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act, has failed miserably. It’s been a total trainwreck. Not only did Republicans fail to even pass a bill out of the House where they have a significant majority, but they damaged themselves politically in the process. And the second (or is it third?) round of Trumpcare seems to have even less support from moderates in the Republican party.
Then there is Donald Trump’s much-hyped tax reform plan, which was embarrassingly light on details – even for Donald Trump. In a desperate attempt to show that something is happening during his first 100 days, Trump sent out his Goldman Sachs guys to announce a tax plan that had less detail than a press release. They stood there in front of reporters unable to answer basic questions about how the Trump plan would impact middle class Americans. The only thing they could say for sure is that Donald Trump still has no intention of revealing his own taxes.
And as to the substance of the Trump tax plan, it is a massive multi-trillion dollar giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and corporations. Some estimates indicate that Trump’s tax plan would cause a $5-$7 trillion budget deficit.
It has no chance passing Congress in its current form and in the end, it’s unlikely Trump will get much more than what George W. Bush accomplished with tax cuts.
What about infrastructure? Nope. Nothing. No movement there.
Trump’s Muslim-bans and his attack on sanctuary cities have been blocked by the courts. And his foreign policy thus far has been confusing and without focus at best. The most generous thing you can say about Trump’s foreign policy is that he’s learning on the job, which is a frightening prospect. Establishment Republicans seem to cheer that this 70-year-old man is learning basic world history and foreign policy on the job and shifting towards a more mainstream Republican foreign policy. But this isn’t a college internship. The country (and the world) can’t afford to let Donald Trump learn on the job.
Oh, and Donald Trump’s job approval rating is historically low, at least 20 points below the average of all other presidents at the same time in his presidency.
Donald Trump’s just keeps making Barack Obama’s legacy look better and better.
This is the lens through which we look at Barack Obama’s legacy. Obamacare is here to stay. Even the most draconian of Republican plans to repeal Obamacare include significant portions of Obamacare’s achievements like the protections for pre-existing conditions protections and some form of Medicaid expansion.
Obama’s civil rights legacy stands tall.
Barack Obama’s legacy on LGBT equality still stands. Under Obama, this country moved at lightning speed towards equality on gay rights – faster than any other equal rights movement. Obama was the first president to support marriage equality and his administration’s refusal to legally enforce the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act led directly to the Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage. President Obama also did away with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell which finally allowed LGBT Americans to serve our country openly.
It’s the economy, Stupid Donald.
Obama’s legacy of job creation and economic growth still stand while early indications of jobs and economic growth under Trump are slowing. No matter how many more pretend Carrier deals Trump claims to pull off, there is no comparison to Barack Obama’s achievement of saving the American auto industry and millions of jobs that were at risk during the Great Recession. Trump promised to be the best jobs president of all time but the truth is that Barack Obama’s jobs legacy stands as one of the best in American history and all Donald Trump has done so far is try to take credit for jobs Obama created.
Despite Donald Trump’s bizarre fascination with coal, Obama’s clean energy revolution is here to stay.
When it comes to the environment and climate change, Trump has signed some executive orders undoing parts of Obama’s achievements but the Paris Deal still stands. And when it comes to coal, the economic forces that have been at work for decades continue to ensure that coal’s share of energy production will continue to decrease. While Barack Obama’s strong support of clean energy and renewable sources of production like solar and wind have caused massive growth in renewable energy production and giant drops in cost when it comes to producing solar and wind energy. Despite Donald Trump’s bizarre fascination with coal, Obama’s clean energy revolution is here to stay.
Obama regulated Wall Street, Donald Trump hired Wall Street into his administration.
President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010 which increase regulations on Wall Street dramatically and also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which helps protect Americans from financial industry scams. And Donald Trump? Well, he’s got a long career of committing financial scams and now he’s filled his Administration with a lot of people from Goldman Sachs.
Although Trump promised to repeal Dodd-Frank during the campaign, he’s shown no ability to get something through Congress – especially something as controversial as deregulating Wall Street.
Obama’s legacy stands tall amid the chaos of Trump’s first 100 days.
Over and over again, Donald Trump has proven that he lacks the basic competence and discipline required to undo President Obama’s monumental legacy.
That’s not to say that Donald Trump can’t be dangerous or that he hasn’t done damage already. Whether it’s fuel efficiency standards for cars, energy efficiency standards for appliances, equal rights protections in the workplace for women and the LGBT community or racist attacks on the Latino and Muslim community – real damage has been done.
However, we’ve also seen that despite having a majority in the House and Senate and control of the White House, Trump can be stopped. The combination of grassroots energy, the true scale of Obama’s accomplishments and of course Donald Trump’s massive incompetence all show us that Barack Obama’s progressive legacy is here to stay.
