Off the top of my head and on mobile leaving a protest, so forgive the brevity but...

I mean, the LGBT+ community can very clearly point to a huge amount of support, funding and policy execution to improve our role and protections in the US.

And if pointing out that the conservative media executed a racist and outlandish hate campaign with such accusations as "you are not a citizen" and "you are a secret Muslim" and "Obama death panels" (all FOX news headlines, researchable) is "Obamapology" then I say: you are normalizating racism.

> I mean, the LGBT+ community can very clearly point to a huge amount of support, funding and policy execution to improve our role and protections in the US.

He has provided vocal support, but the sole thing he did policy-wise was end DADT. He was actually anti-gay marriage during his '08 run, but as the tide shifted, he updated his stance. It was state legislatures and judges and people that helped the LGBT community make the gains it did. So good for him for going with the flow, but he certainly wasn't the reason progress was made. If that is the best thing going for Obama (which it may be), that's pretty bad.

> you are normalizating racism

Number of logical fallacies here. Wasn't Bush Jr. an ape, a retard? Clinton a rapist? All presidents face tremendous scrutiny, both reasonable and unreasonable hatred, and it's ridiculous to adjust your ranking of a president's success based on ANYTHING, let alone something that is basically part of the job. Was FDR a better president when he was in a wheelchair? Unlikely. Was Reagan better because he had dementia late in his second term? Nope. So the point is that it's completely irrelevant to an assessment of Obama's policies, and it likely is used as filler because there's way more bad than good to Obama's reign.

> He was actually anti-gay marriage during his '08 run, but as the tide shifted, he updated his stance.

I'm not sure if you get this, but this is the vast majority of America and many parts of the world that had this. People trot out, "Such and such was anti-gay marriage or anti-trans." Yes. Bruh. There are trans people who tell me I'm insufficiently trans in 2017 because I don't elect surgery or share much about the femme side of my lfie.

Literally everyone has had to come around to this. The sooner, the better. Trying to discredit someone by saying at one point they were part of a majority that still dislikes the idea is like saying water is wet.

The Obama administration has provided a lot of funding for pro-LGBT+ initiatives. You seem ill-informed here. It's more than DADT (although that is huge). But even just being a vocal supporter and vocally blocking things like Pence's FADA are net good for the community.

> So the point is that it's completely irrelevant to an assessment of Obama's policies, and it likely is used as filler because there's way more bad than good to Obama's reign.

I'm confused. So this is your justification for one of the most intractable congresses in the history of America? Do you actually believe what you're writing?

But yeah, ableism and sexism and uh... yeah Clinton's stance on women was bad there's no ism he took advantage of women. They exist. They have hurt other people. They hurt HRC's campaign enormously. Worth noting that being a proud supporter of rape doesn't really seem to be a black mark on any president.

I'm not trying to downplay Obama's failings. But I refuse to be the kind of fake progressive that refuses any president any nod of progress simply because they didn't completely finish the job. Same as how I refuse to forgive Sanders for his poor handling of BLM (and voting yes on the Trump cabinet) but also give him unceasing credit for his consistent foreign policy points.

> Trying to discredit someone by saying at one point they were part of a majority that still dislikes the idea is like saying water is wet.

I think I give sufficient credit where it's due here, but it wasn't like he was an LGBT hero like many make him out to be. But I'll throw out all of the other good things I know about Obama, too: eased US-Cuba relations, commuted over a thousand sentences of nonviolent drug offenders + Chelsea Manning, shifted some land from the poorly managed BLM to the Forests Service, made it easier to get insurance with pre-existing conditions.. These are good things, but even in the case of the last three, there are huge strings attached. Like the fact that the commutations were only symbolic, because his administration prosecuted hundreds of thousands for the same 'crimes' and did nothing to fix the system. And the fact that the BLM still owns a third of the country west of the Mississippi. And the fact that ACA was terribly implemented and is an administrative nightmare.

And then there are the more 'pure' bad things. Foreign policy + surveillance (as discussed), executive overreach, killing US citizens without warrants, 0% interest rates + QE, trillion dollar deficits and no plan to address entitlements.

I was optimistic about some of Obama's rhetoric at one point, but quite frankly he is just arrogant and I don't fall for the self-righteous "great dad" persona. His pros come with strings attached and his cons are historically terrible, placing him amongst the worst Presidents of the last century history alongside Bush Jr., Bush Sr., Woodrow Wilson, Hoover, and FDR. Trying to restrain myself from putting half the presidents on this list. The point is that the average president is bad, and Obama was below average.

This debate probably won't get anywhere because we clearly place different emphases on the various points listed above, but I think it's fair to say this is a pretty comprehensive list of his main pros and cons.

I just don't think a president with an opposition congress can be expected to do much.

I don't fully understand why Obama was such a proponent of a surveillance state, as well. It is disappointing, but to me it's only somewhat of a problem. I think a surveillance society is 100% inevitable. It is not possible to prevent it, nor is it necessarily the end of all freedom so long as we take care as we're shaping it to make it so that surveillance is uniform and everyone has access to a reasonable portion of the data. That's the best we can do to create a reasonable series of norms around it.

> I just don't think a president with an opposition congress can be expected to do much.

Perhaps not through legislation, but all of the 'pure bad' things I mentioned -- with the exception of the deficit and lack of entitlement reform -- can be blamed primarily on Obama. Even interest rates/QE, as he appointed a Fed chairwoman who maintained the same policies and met with Obama quite frequently.

> I think a surveillance society is 100% inevitable.

I agree, but I don't think it's a good thing or that it makes the politicians who enable it any less bad -- it's just inevitable that the kind of people who run governments will like it.