For most people, their first exposure to Obama was the 2004 keynote speech at the DNC convention. I watched that speech, and I knew I was looking at the next Democrat President (I didn't give Kerry much chance).
I didn't think Obama was the new superstar because it was a great speech, but because the audience was in complete rapture. People were crying. He was everything they ever wanted.
If you were from Chicago, you had heard that speech before. It was his standard soapbox speech, he had been fine-tuning it for years. For everyone else, it was the first time.
Obama was always marketing plan. His 2 years in the Senate were spent making political alliances with people like Ted Kennedy, and avoiding all controversial votes. So by 2008, he had a power base that could take on Hillary- and no voting record that she could use to criticize him.
I also knew that his presidency was going to be the Alinsky playbook writ large, I just didn't think it would be as successful as it was. Trump got about halfway reversing the damage, but it's flipped back and once again we're going the wrong way, and full speed ahead.
They seem to think this is their last shot, no more incremental policies. If they can get that $3.5Tn spending package, it institutionalizes the reset agenda and will absolutely kill startups, and crush private investments.
Gov't spending will squeeze out everything else. It will be the very wealthy, and those left with nothing after one or maybe two generations. The "wealth taxes" will transfer the remaining assets of the middle class to the wealthy, as people are forced to sell their property to pay capital gains taxes on inflated values.
When your 200K house is appraised at 300K, you will get to cough up 25 or 30K in cap gains taxes that you probably don't have in your checking account...