I found this older Fiscal Times article (Obama: The Covert Conservative Liberals Have to Love) due to it’s name, so I decided to give it a read.  The basic gist is that President Obama was far more centrist than he’s often given credit for.  With the article being from 2011, the public’s opinion of Obama has certainly waxed and waned a bit on both sides of the isle since it was written; but in the wake of his presidency, to both the right and the left, he will continually be immortalized (or demonized) as a liberal demigod.

It’s also true, as the LA Times points out, that the staunch partisan lines drawn during and after the Obama era were not entirely the former president’s fault.  In fact, the LA Times highlighted how it was President Obama’s plan to move closer toward partisanship, rather than widening the gap.  So how did his goal get so completely derailed, to the point of heading in the complete opposite direction?

But the spirit of compromise weakened in the 1980s as Republicans grew more consistently conservative and Democrats more reliably liberal.

The divide widened under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, and worsened further under Obama.

Higher levels of education, the advent of social media, greater racial diversity, increased income inequality, and changes in the economy and where Americans live probably all played a role.

In today’s social media-based political arena it’s not so much the “what” as it is the “who”.  People share Facebook posts and memes without fact-checking and attach loosely-related ideas to whatever fits their point of view in the moment.  The left has given ownership of all-things-liberal to former president Obama, whether rightfully so or not, in spite of his efforts toward bipartisanship.  Members of both parties attach what the approve of to their individual figurehead, and anything ill-fitting to their narratives belongs to the other team.

All this does is drive a larger wedge between the left and right and make true bipartisan efforts less and less likely to be successful.  Many liberals today would rather see President Trump fail than to admit he’s right or good in any way.  Basically, anything that Obama says is gold, and if President Trump says the same thing, it will be met with every kind of resistance possible.  There doesn’t seem to be any moves toward bipartisan politics in sight.  That’s fake news for you, folks.  #openyoureyes