While the ACA is far from perfect, I think it's better than nothing, which is what the Republicans have come up with so far. I'd prefer "Medicare for all" but that's a debate for another time. To be fair, the Democrats didn't have full control of Congress during those last six years of Obama's presidency. But I did say...
I should have said he would have the time and, given a Democratic Congress, the potential to be effective. Whether he would be is another question.
My own take on it is that if we can spend $500 Billion+ a year on protecting our people from foreign invasion, we can damn well spend a lot less on protecting our people from ill health. I don't fault Obama for making healthcare a priority... what I fault him for is making it THE priority. He ought to have concentrated on getting the economy back on it's feet right out of the gate - cutting taxes on everyone making less than $200,000 and raising them for everyone making more, just as he promised during the 2008 campaign. Whatever happened to that idea? And infrastructure investment. Once he did that and spurred consumer demand, then it would have given him the momentum and political capital to tackle healthcare in a meaningful fashion. But like you say, that's another debate.
The point is that he had a Democratic Congress coming into office... and he had the momentum from a landslide win, and yet he was still ineffectual. Essentially, he was in the same position that FDR was when he came into office. He could have launched his own version of the New Deal. But he squandered the opportunity. He was a weak, listless political giant who allowed himself to be tied down by a bunch of Lilliputians. Take the Garland nomination to the Supreme Court as an example. Mitch McConnell once boasted that his proudest moment as a Senator was when he had the temerity to walk into the Oval Office and tell the President of the United States that his nominee wasn't going to get a hearing, let alone a vote. Take that in for a second... Merrick Garland was the most experienced nominee ever nominated for a Supreme Court position in the history of the country. He wasn't an ideologically controversial choice. He was a solid, experienced centrist choice.
And what did the President do? He meekly accepted it.
Bull****. What he should have done was bide his time until the 2016 election campaign was underway and then have Harry Reid and Joe Biden march into one of those Senate pro forma sessions, have the Vice President take the gavel from whatever Republican Senator occupied the chair, and then have Senator Reid make a point of order that a quorum wasn't present. Until a quorum could be mustered, then the Senate would be in a de facto recess. Do that 3 times, and the way would have been cleared for Obama to give Judge Garland and every other judicial nominee being obstructed by the Republicans a recess appointment. He could have had a big ol' swearing in the East Room. And if the Republicans wanted to stop it, they would have had to take 18 out of the 22 Senators they had running for re-election off the campaign trail every three days to come to Washington and answer the roll every time Reid made a point of order that a quorum wasn't present.
That's hardball. That's what President Obama could have done. That's what he should have done. Harry Truman would have done it. Hell, Harry Truman once gave the same Judge three separate recess appointments when the Republicans and Southern Democrats refused to give him a vote. The same with Ike and JFK too, whenever they nominated pro-civil rights Judges in the South and the Senate Judiciary Committee (chaired by Senator Eastland (D-MS)) refused to give them a hearing. So why didn't Obama?
Because he didn't have game. For all his basketball savvy, he never figured out that you've got to throw an occasional elbow under the rim if you want any respect.
