Ninety percent of Democrats hold a favorable view of Barack Obama today, compared with just 4% unfavorable.
So why on issue after issue, are the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders staking out positions far to the left of anything Obama ever imagined - even while attempting to bask in his holy glow?
At this point in the 2012 campaign, Obama was still cracking down on state-legal marijuana dispensaries and laughing derisively when asked about legalizing recreational pot.
This month, not only did all the candidates speaking about it at the debate agree to bring the troops home, there was even talk of restoring the legislative branch's constitutional role in declaring war, a notion that Obama brazenly flouted in Libya.
The largely unacknowledged dissonance between Obama's iconography and policy platform has led to some of the 2020 campaign's more embarrassing moments, such as when front-runner Biden claimed about the previous administration's immigration record: "We didn't lock people up in cages. We didn't separate families."
Whereas Obama tied himself in knots to get a 10-year price estimate on his signature piece of legislation at under $1 trillion, that's far less than the opening bids on any number of 2020 candidates' plans.
So the 2020 primary race may boil down to one question: Is Biden capable of admitting his mistakes without spitting out a word salad of defensive gibberish, and if so, are Democratic voters willing to show grace to Obama's right-hand man?
https://reason.com/2019/09/23/2020-dems-love-obama-hate-obamas-policies/
So why on issue after issue, are the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders staking out positions far to the left of anything Obama ever imagined - even while attempting to bask in his holy glow?
At this point in the 2012 campaign, Obama was still cracking down on state-legal marijuana dispensaries and laughing derisively when asked about legalizing recreational pot.
This month, not only did all the candidates speaking about it at the debate agree to bring the troops home, there was even talk of restoring the legislative branch's constitutional role in declaring war, a notion that Obama brazenly flouted in Libya.
The largely unacknowledged dissonance between Obama's iconography and policy platform has led to some of the 2020 campaign's more embarrassing moments, such as when front-runner Biden claimed about the previous administration's immigration record: "We didn't lock people up in cages. We didn't separate families."
Whereas Obama tied himself in knots to get a 10-year price estimate on his signature piece of legislation at under $1 trillion, that's far less than the opening bids on any number of 2020 candidates' plans.
So the 2020 primary race may boil down to one question: Is Biden capable of admitting his mistakes without spitting out a word salad of defensive gibberish, and if so, are Democratic voters willing to show grace to Obama's right-hand man?
https://reason.com/2019/09/23/2020-dems-love-obama-hate-obamas-policies/
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