Sick of seeing meaningless epithets "corporatist" and "neoliberal" hurled at progressives like Obama [View all]

Let's be very clear. Obama was a progressive. Just a few of his major accomplishments:
Prevented a second great depression.
Dodd-Frank, strongest financial regulations since WW2.
Expanding healthcare to millions of people while reducing cost growth.
Saving the auto industry with large state intervention.
Embracing stimulus and rejecting austerity, resulting in a much stronger and faster recovery than Europe.
Deal with Iran.
Paris agreement on Climate Change, and significant progress domestically through executive orders.
Raised taxes on the wealthy.
Etc.


Then there's the long list of things that he was for but got blocked by the GOP:
Public option
Minimum wage hike
Large infrastructure/green energy investments
Employee free choice
Student loan reform
Immigration reform with path to citizenship
Etc.


Nobody in their right mind can look at this and say it's not progressive. Which makes the whole "Dems lost because they aren't progressive" argument utterly absurd.

To be fair, Obama's tenure was not flawless. Some people didn't like TARP (necessary, but should have done more for homeowners). Some people don't like TPP (I'm neutral). Some people think we should have let Gadafi mass murder his own people like we did in Rwanda instead of join the Europe-led humanitarian intervention. Some people blame the Syrian civil war on Obama for reasons that are totally bewildering because Obama didn't hardly do anything in Syria. And so on.

Fine, there will always be mistakes, nits to pick, but that doesn't change the fact that overall he was great progressive leader. If you are determined to to paint someone in a bad light and focus exclusively on a few shortcomings, then none of the supposed progressive Democratic heros of the past will survive. Just briefly:
FDR interred the Japanese.
Truman dropped nukes.
JFK invaded Cuba unprovoked during peacetime.
LBJ oversaw the Vietnam escalation.

Oh, and all those presidents were pro-trade. But for some reason, when it comes to Obama, the far-left insists on ignoring his entire record and just scream "neoliberal corporatist" because of a few areas of policy disagreement.