Barack Obama: (Moderate) Conservative Democrat

Obama said once that in the 1980s he'd be seen as a moderate Republican. The sentiment has been echoed in other places as well.

In reality, Obama probably was around or a bit to the right of Nixon on economic issues, broadly center-left on social issues, but not quite a moderate Republican by 1980s/1990s standards. He was also in practice fairly conservative on immigration and sort of hawkish outside of the Iran Deal.

How could Obama's administration actually end up being Moderately Conservative by 1980s/1990s standards?


I think a different Cabinet would play a big part. He relied quite a bit on his advisers (just look at how he want from being anti-mandate to pro-individual mandate). Commerce Secretary Locke, Agricultural Secretary Vilsack, DHS Secretary Napolitano, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, Secretary of State Clinton were already fairly conservative picks IIRC. David Boren and Chuck Hagel be

Evan Bayh would be a more conservative alternative to Biden and Obama had something of a coin toss OTL when picking between the two. Somebody mentioned as an option but wasn't on the final list for VP was Sam Nunn, an actual Conservative Democrat (and a potential contender for Bloomberg's 2008 running mate). Otherwise, perhaps Bloomberg or (given that he said he'd say yes if offered) Chuck Hagel, although I doubt either would actually be asked.

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen was on the HHS list OTL (supposedly one of the final two), and if picked progressives likely would have been apoplectic. His health-reform proposals (paraphrasing here) have more or less amounted to (1) abolishing an employer-provided health system (2) reforming Medicare into being a premium support model (kind of like what Paul Ryan proposed) and (3) expanding this reformed medicare into covering most people. While Governor he also cut medicaid spending at a time when Democrats had unified control of the state Government as well. Obama might actually put forward a healthcare reform which gets some GOP support but not unified Democratic support (kind of like what Clinton was trying to do in 1993-1994).

Norm Coleman narrowly beating out Al Franken, thus forcing Obama to rely on Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins for cloture, might shift his policy proposals to the right a bit. Coleman winning also means that Judd Gregg's appointment to the Commerce Department wouldn't be an issue here (Gregg withdrawing OTL because his being replaced by a Democratic Governor would give the Democrats a supermajority).
 
I think the parts you mention about the Senate numbers being slightly different are well put. We already saw this IOTL with how he approached the ACA. If Obama had total fiat, he likely would have gone for single payer, or at the very least, some kind of Medicaid buy-in. However, he needed to drag along the Baucus and (Ben) Nelson wings of the party for votes, so he changed his policy stance in order to accommodate political constraints. If you push these constraints further right via Senate numbers, you may see him move his economic policy windows that direction as well, similar to how Clinton did that on social issues in the 1990s (V-chip, school uniforms, crime).

Also, if he and Boehner actually succeeded with their Grand Bargain strategy, he would have had to whip a ton of votes on the left for the kind of changes to entitlements meant to add long term stability. This probably would have framed him in the media as a moderate pushing the left wing of his party to the table, so that alone would change the perception of him as a more centre-left Democrat, even if the rest of his policies were mostly liberal.
 
I don't think Obama ever really advocated for single-payer. IIRC, he thought both single-payer and abolishing employer-provided health coverage were radical measures.

He'd have gone for a public option without having to bring in Baucus, Nelson, Lincoln, Lieberman, etc though, I think.
 
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