Anything on the fiscal side that Obama wanted to do to tackle inequality or bump up growth died in 2010.
Even before the election the Dems started a silent war with themselves with Obama being a football.
Blue Dogs as a response to pressure from the right cried about the deficit and whether Obama was gonna bankrupt the country. Progressives were saying unless he pushed for more demand side spending he was betraying the working people.
Like idiots the Dems love to be, made the GOP's job extremely easy. They just stupidly fueled the racial dog whistles the GOP was using.
Most of the best proposals out of the administration was dead on arrival.
Like I rant about before, few like to be honest about what Obama tried to do. The right wants paint him as a wasteful socialist that want to give money away to lazy poor people. Progressives want to paint him a neoliberal centrist that look out for corporations and only focused on identity politics.
If you imagine a world where Obama gets his way on everything. We would have probably hit above 3% GDP growth a couple years, the economy would be structurally stronger, and our tax code would be much much better. Deficits would be bigger and income inequality would still exist (we would be in a better situation than we are in now)
Best of all, we would be set up to really tackle income inequality. A world like Bernie Sanders world would not look like pie in the sky if we had a public option, jobs bills, an EITC expansion and free community college.
If shared prosperity is at the top of the mountain, it is the easier to see if from half way up, than at the base. Unfortunately, Trump gonna dig us into a ditch.
What a time