Saturday, December 24, 2016

As Obama accomplished policy goals, his party floundered

In boasting about his tenure in the White House, President Barack Obama often cites numbers like these: 15 million new jobs, a 4.9 percent unemployment rate and 74 months of consecutive job growth.
There's one number you will almost never hear: More than 1,030 seats.
That's the number of spots in state legislatures, governor's mansions and Congress lost by Democrats during Obama's presidency.
It's a statistic that reveals an unexpected twist of the Obama years: The leadership of the one-time community organizer and champion of ground-up politics was rough on the grassroots of his own party. When Obama exits the White House, he'll leave behind a Democratic Party that languished in his shadow for years and is searching for itself.
"What's happened on the ground is that voters have been punishing Democrats for eight solid years — it's been exhausting," said South Carolina state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, who lost two gubernatorial campaigns to Nikki Haley, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for ambassador to the U.N. "If I was talking about a local or state issue, voters would always lapse back into a national topic: Barack Obama."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/obama-accomplished-policy-goals-party-floundered-132019824--politics.html 

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