Quote: Sal Paradise " Fox news, I was in the states 3 weeks ago during the impeachment - Fox basically pulled the Democrats apart. Yes they have the likes of Bill Maher but he is once a week.
Obama was a disaster as a president - the two things he actually did were hugely unpopular - Obama Care and Iran and the country went so far backwards under him it will be a long time before they elect another black president.'"
I suppose if you watch Fox News that would explain so much about your rather distorted world view.
In reality supporting and defending Obamacare was what won the Democrats the house in 2018; it is not an ideal law as it panders a bit too much to the insurance industry but it was the best which could be done to advance healthcare to poorer Americans at the time. It has stablised price increases, crucially introduced the pre-existing condition law and is now consistently popular with a majority of the country. The Republican threat to destroy it was the key Dem message behind their success in the mid-terms.
The Iran deal is so misrepresented by far right wingers it's hard to know what to do with them. It was, of course, jointly negotiated and signed up to by your Tory government and the only reason Trump doesn't like it was because the black man negotiated it and that's never acceptable for him. Again, a large majority of Americans in polling opposed Trump pulling out of the deal.
As for Obama himself, he was a good upper-tier ranked, very hard working, almost entirely scandal-free President who bequethed to his successor a strong economy and reducing deficit. He was elected twice by a majority of American voters and is, by some distance, the most popular living American President.
Quote: Sal Paradise "Those 2018 mid terms were also the election that brought in all the Sanders-esque lefties in to the House of Representatives, so its not like it was a revival of the centrists.'"
This is utterly untrue. The "lefties" who get Fox News attention won in safe Democrat seats, sometimes by toppling more centrist sitting congressmen in primaries. The people who flipped the House by winning seats from Republicans were, and are, very centrist (probably something similar to Ken Clarke Tories in the UK).
Quote: Sal Paradise "These left leaning senators like Cortez made a huge noise when they first went in but seem to have lost their voice now?'"
They aren't Senators they are congresswomen, the four which Fox News obsesses with are four backbenchers out of 435 in the House. They have a role and are in safe districts where their views represent their constituents. But they aren't leadership and they have very quickly acknowledged that Pelosi is the brains of the Democrat operation there and aren't particularly rocking the boat.