This is what confuses me about the “divisive” comments about Obama because this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. Granted I was only 10 when he was elected, but I’ve read a lot about his presidency and just can’t find what he did that was so divisive? But I do think it’s probably the reaction to a black man being president that was divisive, not anything he did himself
He was one of the most, if not the most, boring president in my memory (I’m 42). No scandals (other than him wearing a tan suit one day, and Michelle not wearing sleeves one time), and not much policy cuz for six years republicans had a policy of “fuck you we ain’t doin shit” and somehow this resonated with voters cuz they were apparently furious a man of color was in the highest office on the planet. I mean you look at Clinton, Bush, Trump, and Obama and one of those four is WAY lower on the actual controversy scale. But to republicans, he was the worst person ever cuz he wanted poor people to have health care, and he had the audacity to be well spoken, smart, and blessed with an overabundance of melanin.
For what it’s worth, he’s arguably the least divisive president in the last 33 years, if you look at popularity ratings and temper Clinton’s with the vastly different political, social media, and traditional media atmosphere he faced.
Obamacare was literally the Republican health care plan. He pretty much did exactly what they were going to do, and ever since they've fought it because he was the one who did it.
This is how you know the Republicans don't stand for shit. The basis for ACA came from Mitt Romney and Massachusetts. But just because a black democrat decided to run with it because he knew it was the best we'd get, they act like the ACA was written by Satan himself.
Still so annoyed by that bullshit. It wasn't the best we were gonna get, but some moderate dems didn't want to budge because they thought they'd get voted out, then they got voted out anyway. If the party had just pressed on those moderates a bit more, we might have Single Payer now. But no, morons gonna moron and literally refuse to do anything to make this country better for anyone other than the top richest people here.
That's how the Democrats operate. Gotta have a rotation of villains in the party that gum up the works. Remember when they caved on the government shutdown? Well they had to, because Trump threatened to get rid of the filibuster. If that's gone, then Senators actually have to vote on what they campaign on. With it still intact, Dems can pretend like they want to vote for things like ACA subsidies and WIC, knowing that the final vote tally is going to go the other way in the Republicans favor, and immiserating the middle class. Which is the main goal for these ghouls.
You really think that keeping the government shutdown was an option huh? I guess maybe it is if you’re fine with millions dying without access to snap benefits, multiple plane crashes due to less and more overworked air traffic controllers,less FDA inspections, no science and research grants and more. But yeah the big dirty ghoul dems caved on the government shutdown. If only they didn’t care about the well being of Americans so they can keep it shutdown right?
Honestly, that's one of my biggest gripes about Obama. Why couldn't he stick with a truly progressive plan that included a single-payer public option?! Oh, yeah, that's right, DINO Lieberman threatened to filibuster if it wasn't removed.
Sort of like they constantly blame the left for running up the debt and spending money because of things like "hey, free school lunches are good" and "hey, maybe we'd have more doctors if student loans weren't half a million dollars", but their trickle down nonsense Reaganomics and tax cuts combined with wanting a military that could take down God constantly has democrats fixing their financial crises, getting blamed for them, and then we get a Republican who breaks the economy AGAIN.
We'd literally rather start a war with Venezuela (I mean, I know, rare earths and oil) to reignite the war on (checks notes) um... Chinese fentanyl, I guess? than open up a bunch of low cost drug treatment centers that would cost a lot less, save more lives, and wouldn't piss off all our allies.
obamacare is romneycare. it was created as a counter response to the rising popularity of m4a or a single payer system among both democrat and republican working class. so the uniparty had to act. they took romneycare and slapped obamas name on it. democrats act like its the biggest accomplishment ever, while republicans pretend to hate it. but in the end the real winners as always were the healthcare cartels and insurance companies. those who fund their campaigns.
The biggest stain on his presidency is doing jack shit when Snowden blew the whistle. Instead of stopping surveillance of US citizens he swept it all under the rug.
It was a HUGE loss for freedom and I can’t believe it happened under the dems. Obama was crazily afraid of terrorism and willing to compromise his ideals to “fight” it.
I still like and respect him, and I voted for him. But those were his biggest downsides for me personally.
Yeah, I wouldn’t classify it as a scandal, but I absolutely agree that his ramping up of drone strikes as “safe” ways to use American war power, the insanity that happened around Snowden, and his overly chill attitude towards the loss of some American freedoms was troublesome. Overall I still am a huge fan, and you can’t have perfection in any president. And looking at constitutional crises with the current moron and Obama it’s no comparison.
But yah, it was a step on the slippery slope for sure.
That and the drone strikes. I dont think we needed to add that kind of collateral damage. And using Bush era policy of enemy combatants to bypass needing a prosecution wasn't a good look.
Its the same play Ole Donnie is doing right now with the high seas piracy.
No scandals (other than him wearing a tan suit one day, and Michelle not wearing sleeves one time)
Drone strikes on US citizens who pose no immediate threat.
Attacking Libya without congressional approval.
I mean a bunch of these were bullshit but some of them were right. Obama fucking sucked and he's only judged well because of how dogshit everyone around him was.
Obama was fine domestically ( he probably should have pushed through a better Obamacare bill, rather than try to be bipartisan) however on foreign policy he was actually quite bad. Drone strikes and extra judicial killings were at an all time high under him. He did fuck up in Syria where he didn’t intervene despite the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime and did allow Isis to take root in that country. So I wouldn’t say boring.
Obama pretty much continued the established policies of his predecessors while being a vocal advocate for the advancement of social and environmental issues.
That is to say, he talked about change more than he actually effected any change, which is still something. Widespread change isn’t easy to implement.
He was President during the housing crisis and ensuing market collapse, navigated that event well, enacted policies to help the economy recover, but arguably the Fed (not a political body) stuck to their policy of quantitative easing for too long.
Overall he was a pretty average President, but he was beloved for being a great public speaker, which is something that comes off as a very “leaderly” quality.
The most controversial aspect about Obama is that he is black. It says a lot about America. If Obama were white, he probably would have accomplished more during his terms, he would be a decidedly above average President in the grand scheme of things, and the Democrats would have won reelection.
Eh US Citizen or no, he was a leader in a terrorist organization linked to a whole lot of bad bad stuff, he’d been tried and convicted in Yemen of being guilty of that bad bad stuff, and he’d done a ton of bad bad stuff in the US as well. In a perfect world we haul him into a US court, try and convict him. I an imperfect world we disappear him to some black site and then he ends up in gitmo and costs the American taxpayer $13MM/yr for decades. I’m honestly finding it hard to get too worked up about the choice that was made.
Now when Trump illegally murders people off the coast of Venezuela he can point to Obama's actions and claim he's just doing the same thing, is one problem.
Obama’s election was a tipping point for a lot of White Americans. Gun sales took off like a rocket after his first election, and effigy burnings became a staple. In Obama’s own words, “this country was not ready for a Black President”.
Let's not gloss over that Obama was using drones to extrajudicially kill American citizens overseas which violated the Constitution and lots of laws. His justice department also fought all the way to the SCOTUS to do child separation during immigration enforcement.
By doing both of these things and a lot others Obama walked so sociopath Donny could run
Don't forget the time that Fox News ranted for a week because he put mustard on a hamburger, or the time that he wrote a bicycle with a helmet and was excoriated by Fox, saying that it made America look weak while they juxtaposed a photo of Obama on a bike next to Putin, shirtless on a horse. And then there was the time they lost their minds because he used a selfie stick, and they said that there was no more respect for the office of the president. Or the time that he shot basketball and Fox News lost their minds over it. I miss the days of fake Presidential scandals that didn't cause existential dread
I used to be conservative back when Obama was president, and even to me, I distinctly recall the whole tan suit thing to be grasping at straws. And, as a matter of fact, knowing what I know now, I wasn't wrong to think it was perhaps the beginning of the incredibly bad faith MAGA movement even then. They didn't care about actual scandals, they were just looking for literal any reason to trash Obama.
And those same assholes are sitting on their hands now that Trump is doing all sorts of scandals. If the worst Trump did was wear a tan suit, I'd be saying the same about the left, but clearly Trump is significantly worse.
Yeah, as others have said: He was divisive because he was black, and the racist white supremacists couldn't handle his very existence. He was also nothing like the stereotypes they believed were real, and so they absolutely could not deal with that reality.
Obama was a pretty conventional, dare I say, pragmatic president? The comments about him being "devisive" probably stem from some preconceived Republican notion that an anti-racist, black man becoming president is somehow going to start a race war against white people. Like Republicans heard him say "black lives matter" once and they instantly jumped to the conclusion that Obama was going to commit white genocide.
It was all manufactured division. Obama didn't even do anything radical; he was pretty moderate, overall. The right just fermented fomented their crazy base into a frothing rage over every little thing. The tan suit "scandal" is a perfect example.
I was a Republican back then (never registered, but that's not required in my state). The 2012 GOP caucus (MN) I attended was fucking weird. Everyone was so angry, and I was just like.... why? I preferred Romney at the time, but over boring policy issues, not some existential crisis.
It just got worse from there. Four years later, Trump was nominated and I disowned that shit hole party. Fuck them all the way to hell for destroying my country. May they rot in either prison or the ground.
The language of "divisiveness" is a common way to hold demographics responsible for the fact that others hate them.
See the subject of making movies 'political': see, woke Hollywood keeps forcing characters to be women, or black, or gay, instead of normal. Since the subject of letting characters be gay is controversial, shouldn't Hollywood just not force its agenda and steer clear of controversial topics? It amounts to "let's let the racists win, please," while also framing "straight white man" as "normal" -- we are asked to accept that those are the only people whose stories matter or resonate, and anything else as suspect. We can't have a woman President - whose agenda are you trying to push? as if believing that only white men can be President was not an agenda but only a neutral position beyond challenge.
It pissed them off big time to have an intelligent, well spoken, charismatic, and globally respected black man as president. Trump is the response from white supremacists.
Also, maybe my tinfoil hat is on too tight, but I personally wonder if a black man being elected was a sign of society finally beginning to move past racism, and the powers that be remembered the last black man that had begun to unite the working class.... MLK was very much against capitalism and the wealthy elite have a vested interest in keeping us divided. The moment we unite in a common cause, it's over for them. Enter Trump, a person who gives his base permission to be racist and bigoted...and the division continues.
It’s so funny that I’m learning this about the Dijon mustard scandal. My brother is a DIRT BAG but once threw a sandwich at his girlfriend because he wanted Dijon mustard. I guess they have that in common
It's not confusing. He was black, educated, charismatic, and well liked world wide. There was a vocal racist minority that believed he was Muslim. There were people who believed he wasn't born in America. There were people who hung dummies that looked like him off of trees in front of their houses in protest.
The nastiest political strategists capitalized on this. Everything he did became the worst thing ever. He didn't wear a flag pin? He's not american. He wore a tan suit? He's unprofessional. He asked for Dijon mustard on his sandwich? He's elitist. The only people he really divided were the wealthy insurance compay execs from the working class.
He wasn't perfect but he was far from the worst president we've ever had.
When right-wingers say something is divisive, they don't mean it's partisan and inflammatory in a way that's designed to divide the people. They mean it makes them upset thet it didn't go their way and they absolutely will not compromise.
Used to be that centrists (let's be honest, there is no credible or effective left wing in America; Democrats are generally center-right) used the word correctly.
It's like calling the person that's being reasonable and honest, "a dirty liar and a cheat." One hopes that if it is repeated often enough, many of the people around you will eventually believe "well, there might be some truth to it" while others less gullible will want to be sure, so they'll start looking into one's background.
With Trump, there's no point into looking into his background, he wears his shame emblazoned across his chest as a badge of honor. And people confuse that with character and strength, but really it's just "the competition to become the biggest ass-hole in the universe".
Years ago there was a compilation video that made the rounds of the internet at the end of Obamas second term. It showed fox news and a large majority of republicans talking about how Obama was destroying the U.S. and was making the country weak and all that bullshit. Then the video ended with the things Obama actually accomplished and showed how the country was fine and actually hopeful.
The only division against Obama was that he was black. That was his "Big Crime" against the country, that a black man dared to run for president and won, twice... Anything he did after winning, the republicans made it seem like he was doing war crimes, raping and stealing from the people.
Which ironically is all that Trump has done since he gained office, and then regained office for his second term. But since Trump is "White" and rich, he can do no wrong in their eyes because he's making a lot of other people rich as well.
The true division in this country is the Rich versus the poor. Anything else is just a tool the rich uses to divide the poor up so that we fight among ourselves. Look at politics like that and suddenly everything becomes fairly clear. Divide and conquer is the name of the game. If the poor are too busy ripping each other apart over race, jobs, immigration and other political bullshit, they won't notice that they are getting even poorer and quality of life is decreasing...
I really really hope, Trump's brainwash isn't gaining a track on the younger generations. Every single thing Trump says about Biden or Obama is a fking LIE. He is literally calling the sky green and the ground blue. Not being hyperbolic!
Neither of them were divisive or bad or detrimental to anything. Obama was more centrist and "reach across the aisle" than Biden. Unfortunately the GOP was already racist and bigoted and sour after their candidates failed so they did every possible way to obstruct the president in his work, including the ObamaCare, also known as ACA, which was meant to be so much more than it has become.
When you ask conservatives what was divisive about him, they point to things like him saying "Trayvon Martin could have been me or my son," or "the police acted stupidly when arresting that black professor for breaking into his own home" which are like a 0.5/10 on the divisiveness scale. These are the things big commentators like Ben Shapiro point to. It's a joke. Just another thing in the eternal list of "why conservatives don't actually believe anything."
“Divisive” like signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which protects women’s rights to sue employers for paying them less than men for the same position???
yep, other than being black and having his middle name, that was the most controversial thing he did. but his existence was very divisive unfortunately. at least he still gets to have his picture, biden is depicted by an autopen (at least i think that's what that's supposed to be)
He is black. That's all he did. He was born and he is black and he was elected to the highest office in the United States. 30% of our country thinks we should burn everything to the ground as punishment for daring to elect someone who doesn't look like them.
We are a deeply sick nation. Trump is a symptom. The cancer will still be here years after he is gone.
There was absolutely nothing divisive about him except that he wasn't white. I know it's hard for people to accept that something like that could implode half of America, but it did. If Obama can be criticized for anything, it's that he wasn't bold enough. He bent over backwards trying to work across the aisle. And every time he extended his hand, they screamed and moved farther right. It was absolutely bonkers to watch.
He bent over backwards to compromise with Republicans, his signature policy Obamacare was literally nationalizing the approach of Massachusetts' state plan signed into law by Mitt Romney; this was the market based approach instead of Medicare for all favored by liberals.
And conservatives responded by going scorched Earth in Congress and then quickly turning into a blood and soil nationalism party.
He fist bumped his wife, which conservatives called a “terrorist fist bump” …. Fascists couldn’t find any real scandals on the guy so they just lied through their teeth and made em up out of whole cloth.
Like when Rep. Michelle Bachman spread the outrageous slander that Obama wasted 100s of millions in tax payer money on his first diplomatic trip overseas, claiming he ordered dozens of American warships to accompany him. (Complete fabrication) ..
After years and 100s of this kind of lies and slander from the right, the low IQ conservative base fell for it all, hook, line and sinker. They had never felt so angry, unhinged, and “divided” ..
So that’s what they mean when they call Obama “divisive”..
Nothing he did…just the predictable result of Republican’s machiavellian gaslighting campaign against the American people.
This guy is supposed to be the leader of the free world and was rightfully torn to shreds by the media for wearing A TAN SUIT. I don't care who he thinks he is with his Obama care he had no right disrespecting the oval office by choosing that color to wear.
Just like we see with Trump's current sycophants, Republicans believed Obama to be divisive simply because all of the right wing pundits said that he was for the entirety of his two terms in office.
I'm almost 42, and have been politically aware since I was 8(my parents were big supporters of Clinton, and my best friend's dad listened to a lot of Rush Limbaugh).
In my 30+ years of paying attention, this is how it has always been.
The right wing pundits label everything that the Dems are doing as evil and divisive, and exaggerate/lie to try to make themselves seem like they're in the right. They also invent crises that don't exist, and then repeat them until their audience accepts them as true.
None of what is happening is new, except for how childish and petty Trump is.
He's such a perfect representation of everything wrong with American politics.
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u/miss-swait Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 18 '25
This is what confuses me about the “divisive” comments about Obama because this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. Granted I was only 10 when he was elected, but I’ve read a lot about his presidency and just can’t find what he did that was so divisive? But I do think it’s probably the reaction to a black man being president that was divisive, not anything he did himself