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President Obama: Democrats Lost Over 1,000 Seats During His Presidency

By Aric Mitchell
Published on: 18:27 PST, Jan 2, 2017

President Obama, as Fox News recently pointed out, is fully confident that he would have beaten President-elect Donald Trump in a head-to-head election for a third term.

However, a recent analysis of election results by the news site reveals just how much his party lost during the eight years that he was in office, thus calling into question whether the results would have gone any differently between Obama and Trump as they did with Clinton and the President-elect.

To be clear, the Fox piece does not attempt to pass judgment on how the theoretical head-to-head would have played out.

It is true that President Obama now enjoys around 55 percent approval rating from Gallup while Trump remains one of the least-liked people to ever win the office, at least for as long as polling data has tracked that particular metric.

Even with The Donald taking office in less than three weeks, many of the close to 66 million Americans who voted against him are unsure as to whether he is up for the responsibilities the White House entails.

But regardless of how you feel about either man, the losses that Democrats have suffered since President Obama took office are staggering and undeniable.

Despite his own likability ratings being somewhat healthy, Americans have lost faith in his party, and his public popularity has not transferred to down ballot success.

In all, Democrats have suffered “a net loss of 1,042 state and federal … posts, including congressional and state legislative seats, governorships and the presidency,” Fox News tallies.

Even worse for the legacy of President Obama is how Americans saw his major domestic achievement of ObamaCare, which was passed without a single Republican vote only to suffer setback after setback, from a crashed website at rollout (NBC News) to the loss of participating insurers (CNN) in the marketplace, to tepid polling (Gallup), and sky-high premiums/out-of-pocket expenses (CNBC).

With Republicans now in control at the House and the Senate levels, Donald Trump promising to repeal and replace ObamaCare in his first 100 days, and a Democratic party that is by its own admission so divided it may not be able to make any significant congressional gains in 2018, the legacy of the law and of President Obama himself is in doubt.

These are not surprise revelations either.

Before the nearly 130 million Americans went to the polls on or before Nov. 8, they knew a Trump presidency would turn back much of what President Obama accomplished during his time in the White House.

A sizable portion of Americans — and the necessary allotment to win the Electoral College — decided they had enough and voted against the candidate, who was running on the accomplishments of President Obama, having served in his administration as secretary of state for his first term in office.

Furthermore, the small elections that are more likely to provide an immediate impact on voters’ lives have been won predominately by Republicans.

Currently, the Daily Kos reports, Republicans dominate state government with control of 32 legislatures and 33 governorships, “amounting to 60 percent of the population.”

So while Democrats have had eight years of success with control of the federal executive branch, they have been limiting their own powers by failing to defeat Republicans in midterm and locally driven elections.

The complacency has provided a layer of defense for a GOP looking to stop Democratic policies from the top down, and now that the party has been able to turn the tide with the Oval Office, it finds itself now in position to not only create law, but also implement it with little defense from the opposition.

But what do you think, readers?

Is the current Republican dominance a sign President Obama might have lost a third-term bid against Donald Trump? If not, how do you explain the deterioration of the Democratic party? Sound off in the comments section below.

[Featured Image by Jack | Flickr Creative Commons | Resized and Cropped | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

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