Just because it was watered down by the republicans doesn’t make it not “progressive”. It was “progressive” compared to the other option, which was literally not having any sort of health care coverage/insurance. Things are never that binary.
Remember Obama started with Universal Health care at some point and we ended up with ACA, which is still a win.
I’m talking about progressivism as a defined political ideology, not a vauge statement of making progress.
Obamas healthcare plan was inherently neoliberal, which is a centrist, or even center-right ideology. The market exchange is a capitalist solution to the problem that the health care companies can profit from
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
It’s no secret the Democrats aren’t exactly left leaning by global standards, in reality they are a center-right party that mainly still practices Neoliberalism
The conversation is centered around whether Obama was a progressive. He was not.
Progressivism isn’t just confined to the US, so yes people are talking about progressivism with the full context of the global political spectrum in mind.
But even within the US, Obama is nowhere close to a real progressive like Bernie Sanders, who has been consistently fighting for leftist values for decades.
I realize what you’re doing, but I’m questioning why are you viewing events from the lens of classical ideologies? How is that relevant to viewing whether a policy was beneficial terms of actual progress or not? It’s actually hurting your opinion and outlook since you’re now attributing terms that have a different meaning in contemporary discussion and discourse as opposed to it’s classical definition.
Being a progressive does not have a different meaning in contemporary discussion. Progressivism doesn’t mean something different in the US. The US has leftist progressives like Bernie Sanders.
You are all strawmanning me and trying to make it seem like I’m saying Obama made no progress, when I’m saying Obama wasn’t a progressive.
We are talking about politics. Political ideologies are obviously going to be a part of the conversation. Quit acting like bringing them up is “viewing events from the lens of classical ideologies”. You just aren’t versed in political science.
Here is a page about progressivism specifically in the US if you want to learn more:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism_in_the_United_States