Our democracy is at risk. Trump’s false claims to have won the 2020 presidential election are dangerous enough. We saw the consequences of that. There was nothing that he would not do in order to hold onto power. The sixth of January was not some random date for the insurrection. Donald Trump picked that date because it was the date that Congress would certify the electoral college vote. He wanted to stop Congress from certifying that President Joe Biden had won a majority of electoral college votes.
Relatively uneducated white men have identified themselves as victims because it was no longer the case that being a white man always gave you preferential treatment. The truth about slavery and segregation and structural discrimination and Jim Crow had become widely known. Most of the nation has realized that it was on the wrong course. From 1787 to 1965, we had slavery, segregation and Jim Crow. That’s 178 years. From 1965 to 2020 is 55 years. So, for fully three fourths (¾ or .75 or 75% ) of this nation’s history, African Americans faced either slavery, segregation and / or Jim Crow. The consequences of this upon the educational opportunities and the opportunity to earn income and accrue wealth was catastrophic. Simply no longer allowing slavery, segregation and Jim Crow would not result in equal opportunities for African Americans. It simply meant that they would be exacerbated to an even greater degree. This country has structures and systems and communities in which African Americans were rarely allowed. Knowing people or coming from the right schools gave white men an in that African Americans simply did not and could not have. Even when slavery and segregation and Jim Crow were no longer in effect, the consequences of their existence in the recent past still put tremendous barriers in front of African Americans.
A white man and an African American woman are in a race. The whistle blows and the race has commenced. It has, but for only one of the participants. The official referee holds the African American woman back and the white man gets to run with no competition for a long period of time, maybe ¾ of the race, and then finally the whistle blows again. The referee allows the African American woman to run, but says that she must carry this 25 pound weight. And she is off. Finally, she is allowed to put down the weight. Some of the white men watching the race are grumbling that she should carry the weight and that this is against tradition. They say that this seems unfair and the media and others covering the race talk about the burdens that the African American woman already had to face. After a short time, the white men say, “Look she still has not caught up. She must not be a good runner. “ The rest of the crowd points out that for ¾ of the race’s history, she has had burdens placed upon her that the white man did not and that removing the burdens to whatever extent did not undo all of the unfair advantage that the white man already had. The nature of the problem becomes widely known. White men begin to complain that they are victims of a conspiracy and that the media and everybody else is against them and biased. They get angry.
This is what has happened. Older white men were used to this huge advantage based upon discrimination. When it was no longer allowed and the past was noticed, they felt that they were being discriminated against. They, therefore, only sought out media sources which did not admit or discuss the discrimination that had previously occurred. They identified themselves as victims as Steve Schmidt notes. They began to suspect any and every organization not clearly allied with them as being part of a conspiracy against them. Donald Trump picked up on this sentiment. He knew that for all the pretense they made about caring about family values and morals and democracy and right and wrong, they really only cared about their ethnic identity being defended.
Now other republican candidates had not read that room correctly. They thought that what republican voters had said that they cared about mattered. They cared about experience. I mean this was why Senator John McCain was better than President Obama whose actual experience they never bothered to learn (see bottom of page). Donald Trump’s business experience included repeatedly filing for bankruptcy, he had barely graduated college with help, had no elected experience at all and not even any non elected experience in government. The Hollywood Access tape revealed that he tried to have sex with a married woman while he was on his third wife who was pregnant at the time. It revealed he enjoyed sexual harassment. Did the moral republicans and fundamentalists care about this at all ? No. That was all for show. They cared about controlling women and their bodies, not morality no matter what they said about the previous president during the last peacetime private sector job growth period of note. He did have the right racial view, however. He snuck in the backdoor through a method giving more weight to white voters, the electoral college. There were still huge structural advantages and outsized power to the Republican Party and white voters in our system of government.
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Once in the door, republicans abandoned all that talk about being ‘fiscally responsible’ and approved a $2Trillion tax cut going to the wealthy and corporations. The corporations used it to buy back stock as always. Every week the president had promised a new and better health care bill and it was always infrastructure week. They created a bogeyman for their voters with those seeking asylum and put children in cages. They banned Muslims which was a big plus for their voters. They prevented transgender people from serving in the military. It’s always weird when their morality ideas which don’t impact them at all override the ‘small government’ mantra as even the very conservative note. They, like every previous republican president since and before Ronald Reagan, did not balance the budget and did increase the national deficit and the national debt. He made it clear he worshipped Putin and Duarte and Kim Jong-Un and so opposition to democracy and human rights abuses did not fit into the republican voters’ understanding of morality. He had peaceful protestors gassed and attacked .
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However, as his term went on, the danger that he would present to democracy became more and more evident. His voters, however, had already chosen media sources which confirmed their views. The method by which results for their google search were determined were largely biased upon your pre-conceived views. The search already included bias in the choice of words and phrasing. Social media reinforced their views. So, they rarely heard of the facts even though they were found by no less a conservative republican than former FBI Director Robert Mueller. There was no way to handwave this as a partisan investigation. He documented ten instances of Obstruction of Justice. He found that Donald Trump jr had approved a meeting with a Russian lawyer closely connected to Putin, Natalia Veselnitskaya, in an exchange of government policy for opposition research on Hillary Clinton. Since campaigns regularly spend large sums of money on opposition research and they use it on advertising which is mostly negative and spend valuable staff time upon it, there is no actual doubt that opposition research is a thing of value. Simply soliciting a campaign contribution, a thing of value, from a foreign national is a violation of campaign finance law.
The US Constitution gives Congress alone the power of the purse, Article 1 . Congress had approved aid for Ukraine. President Trump prevented the aid from reaching Ukraine despite having no legal right to do so. When the Ukrainian president became desperate enough to raise the topic, President Trump immediately replied that ‘he needed a favor though’. Since those words appeared in that context, no other conclusion can be drawn other than that he, Donald Trump, was placing a new condition upon the reception of money that Congress had already approved for Ukraine. The favor was not that he wanted an assurance of a quiet investigation to learn the truth about Hunter Biden. That’s not what he demanded. His demand was simply an announcement of an investigation into the son of a possible political rival in exchange for the release of money already approved by Congress which had also already verified that Ukraine qualified for the foreign aid by virtue of its efforts to fight corruption. This was also clearly seeking a campaign contribution from a foreign government and a foreign national. Thus, it also was a violation of campaign finance law. Donald Trump broke the law when he did this. Michael Cohen, the president’s fixer, had paid porn stars three weeks prior to the election to be silent about their relations with Donald Trump. That amount was much larger than the largest campaign donation allowed by law. Donald Trump repaid him. The person who either primarily or exclusively benefited from that relationship was Donald Trump. Yet, Michael Cohen ended up in jail for campaign finance violations. This shows that there were campaign finance violations and clearly since they were performed on behalf of and for Donald Trump, then Donald Trump should certainly have received at least as much of a sentence as Michael Cohen. However, since republicans no longer cared about serious violations of the law (long past those days when consensual oral sex was a major crime which should have justified the removal of a president who had actually won a plurality of the vote).
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This should have warned us that he would do anything to seek or retain power. In fact, we learned that he attempted to convince state legislatures to choose his slate of electors whether he won the popular vote in the state or not. The vast majority of the reason so many people have died during the pandemic is because that which would have reduced the loss of life might have reduced his chances of winning re-election. He attempted to reduce the number of people who would vote by making people vote in person which could put their life at risk in order to vote. This is the guy who said, “We need to get rid of the ballot.” So much for democracy. He reverted to his favorite move prior to an election which was to excuse a loss ahead of time as due to cheating. Now, republicans in Congress might not have read the room right previously, but they sure knew that Donald Trump owned the republican voters, lock, stock, and barrel because he was on “their side” in racial issues. They had seen incumbent republican US Senators lose their primary and, thus, not be able to run in the general election as a republican if they ran at all. They knew that republican voters would vote for their opponent if Donald Trump told them to. So, when it was determined that Joe Biden had won the electoral college and Donald Trump decided to lie to republican voters and say that Joe Biden had cheated and / or he, Donald Trump, had actually won the electoral college, almost all of them were silent.
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Mitch McConnell had believed that if he and his republican senate together spoke out against this lie, then they would lose voters they needed to hold onto Congress and win future elections. He, somehow, believed that Donald Trump would eventually let go of this. However, as audits and recounts and rulings from judges and justices appointed even by republican presidents and even Donald Trump himself, he must have realized that he had miscalculated. This had already gathered so much momentum because the person republican voters most trusted, Donald Trump, had repeated the lie so often and so few republicans had opposed the lie and the republican voters had already eliminated all sources of information contrary to what they wanted to believe, then 70+% of republican voters become unmovably convinced that Donald Trump had actually won the electoral college and Joe Biden had cheated and so Donald Trump had been robbed of re-election. Thus, republicans had become convinced, not only of Donald Trump winning, but that election results were untrustworthy and not to be believed. There were some 20 to 25% of republicans who knew that this was untrue, but the party was now committed to the position that Donald Trump had actually won the 2020 election and that election results were false and not to be believed. They lost even more of however few rational republicans remained, but they picked up kooks, conspiracy theorists, and white supremacists in their place.
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Well, now we had to know that there would be some percentage of these voters who stood up for democracy, at least they thought that was what they were doing or at least some of them may have believed it. The rest of them apparently accepted what they believed was a coup sitting on their hands. Donald Trump knew that there were only a few very important dates and January 6 was one of them which were an important part of any transfer of power. Congress counts the electoral college votes on this date. This was the last date prior to the inauguration of the person whom Congress had found to have obtained more electoral college votes. Donald Trump thought that he could either prevent that and, thereby, stop any transition or impose a large cost upon Congress for not rubber-stamping his loss into a win for him Pressure was exerted upon republican lawmakers to object to the certification of electoral college votes. He tried to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence into doing something that he could not do as well. Trump’s own words show that this was his intent.
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Donald Trump is pushing another false proposition, one that says that he will be re-instated even though there are no re-instatements allowed in the US Constitution and he was defeated by Joe Biden in the presidential election. The Republican Party, already, was no friend of democracy given their promotion of voter suppression. However, now they are an avowed opponent of democracy. (highly recommend clicking on this link ) That’s true in two ways. First, from here on, no republican candidate who loses is likely to concede despite its importance as a hallmark of of our democracy historically since they backed Trump’s failure to concede (which is anti-democratic since President Biden won by 3 states each with a margin of over 10,000 votes a margin of victory greater than that which has ever been overturned in a presidential election [link found only 3 elections overturned with margins of 129 votes in 2004 Washington gubernatorial election and 800 votes in election for auditor of accounts in Vermont in 2006 and 215 votes in 2008 Minnesota US Senate seat election ) , 70+% of republican voters will believe that the election results were not to be believed and false if their candidate loses. It is unlikely that we will retain our democracy if Donald Trump wins in 2024 and he leads in all polling among republican primary voters to be the Republican Party’s nominee for president . There will be no peaceful transfer of power if a republican president is in the White House. Second, since their voters falsely believe that there was some sort of widespread voter fraud, they were able to justify to their voters and all members of their party that they needed to put in voter suppression bills to solve the nonexistent problem of voter fraud. In addition, the kind of talk that Donald Trump is now engaging in (see a picture of the advertisement for Trump rally in which he is presented as “our REAL president” here )is likely to lead to another insurrection (Rachel’s remarks in the video below) .
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These voter suppression bills are a means to an end which Lindsay Graham even admitted. Lindsay Graham seems to be speaking for the party when he appears to say that they know that they need the freaks (QAnon, conspiracy theorists, Proud Boys and other white supremacists) to win future elections and it is clear that they view it as better to attempt to win with these voters than to try to win without them since they likely can’t. Historically, there have only been a few examples when the party which holds the White House wins the first midterms. Redistricting and gerrymandering already make it an uphill battle to retain Congress. However, these voter suppression bills might seal victory for the republicans.
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If republicans win control of both chambers of Congress, then it becomes much more likely that they will turn a narrow electoral college loss for their presidential candidate in 2024 into a win if the Democratic Party’s nominee wins the electoral college vote. Electoral college votes are usually going to be very close. This will make it possible for them to do this. This means that we cannot allow them to win control of Congress. However, that means that we absolutely must pass measures to counteract the voter suppression bills. If we don’t do that, then we will lose our democracy.
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It’s bad enough that Joe Manchin, the only Senate Democrat to not support the For the People Act, doesn’t understand that the filibuster needs to go for the sake of democracy due simply to its direct effects. It enables a party which lost 27 million more votes (simply add up the votes for the US Senate candidates in both parties in the general elections of 2016 and 2018 and 2020 to verify this) to completely dictate what legislation is even voted on in a body which is already structurally advantageous to republicans and white voters. The Republican Party has shown through what happened on immigration, the ACA, and the previous stimulus bill that they have no interest in governing or working with democrats in Congress. They are incentivized to not allow any legislative victories to pass because those victories would buoy their voters and other voters to keep them in power. Hence, republicans are opposed to bills which have the support, not only of a majority of voters, but also a plurality of republicans. We have had the filibuster for quite some time now and republicans have not voted with democrats on major bills during that time. It is clear that their behavior won’t change. Their behavior is due to their political incentive to stop any progress and due to the extremists in their party. So, it’s not simply unlikely to change, it’s impossible to change given their incentives. 70% of US Senators represent 30% of the country. Wyoming has a population of less than six hundred thousand people. California has a population of nearly 40 million people . Yet they both have the same number of US Senators. Therefore, republicans already have a large structural advantage. This makes certain that no extremist legislation from “the far left” can pass. They don’t need an additional structural advantage, the filibuster.
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The reason why republican voters will view our democracy bills with suspicion if they are not passed with a wide bi-partisan majority is because their party and their party leaders like Donald Trump are telling them that there was widespread voter fraud. However, that behavior doesn’t mean that voter suppression should not be stopped. Where is the logic in that ? Donald Trump tells his voters that there was widespread voter fraud and that election results cannot be trusted. Republican voters believe this. Thus, they oppose bills which undo and oppose voter suppression and they, the republican voters, support the voter suppression bills across the country. Now, how do we get to :. Therefore, since republican voters won’t support the bills designed to undo voter suppression, those bills should not be passed ? I don’t follow the logic there.
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Donald Trump tells his voters that there was a lot of voter fraud in the last election and that election results cannot be trusted
70+% of republicans believe anything Donald Trump says
:. 70% republicans believe that there was a lot of voter fraud in the last election and that election results cannot be trusted
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70% of republican voters, believing that election results are untrustworthy due to widespread voter fraud, support voter suppression bills
These republican voters who support voter suppression bills won’t support bills designed to undo the voter suppression which their voter suppression bills yield
:. Bills which undo their voter suppression should not be allowed to pass Congress
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How does that conclusion follow from the premises ? We know why republican voters hold the views that they do and it is based upon lies from Donald Trump and other republicans. Why is it that simply because republican voters believe the lies told them by Donald Trump that voter suppression bills should not be opposed ?
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Voter suppression should be opposed for its own sake. The filibuster doesn’t measurably increase the amount of bi-partisan votes on major issues. Since such a large percentage of republican voters believe such false things like there was widespread voter fraud in the last election and Donald Trump actually won the last election and election results are not to be believed, then if the standard for determining whether or not a bill which undoes voter suppression should be passed is whether or not republican voters and republicans in Congress support it, then such legislation will not in the foreseeable future be passed, nor should it. However, it is apparent to all with a working moral compass that voter suppression bills should be countered by passing a bill in the US Congress. Voter suppression is wrong no matter how many republicans in Congress or republican voters support it. It is wrong to not do whatever one can to stop voter suppression. If a choice must be made about whether or not to retain the filibuster or oppose voter suppression, then that is an easy choice for anybody with a working moral compass. It is wrong to not do whatever one can to stop voter suppression even if every republican in the country supports it. Bi-partisan is not a synonym for morally correct. These people were not even willing to vote for a group to investigate the insurrection. Most of them were silent while Donald Trump lied to their voters. Basing a decision of whether or not to get a bill passed which undoes voter suppression upon what republicans in Congress or republican voters say is to not in the foreseeable future. It doesn’t matter who supports voter suppression whether it is local election officials or republican voters or republicans in Congress. It is wrong no matter what and it must be stopped no matter what.
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However supporting the filibuster now and not being willing to do what it takes to pass our democracy bills will lead to the loss of our democracy. It will mean not only that due to voter suppression fewer African Americans who should be allowed to vote won’t be as bad as that is; it will mean that it won’t matter who wins the electoral college vote according to the reported election results, the republican candidate will be put into the White House. Joe Manchin’s refusal to do what it takes in order to get the For the People Act passed will mean that it won’t matter who wins according to the vote, the Republican Party’s candidate will become president. If we lose democracy, while the primary responsibility will lie upon Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and republicans in Congress, Joe Manchin’s culpability won’t be much less than theirs. If Joe Manchin at least would commit to carving out an exception to the filibuster for democracy legislation and to vote for the For the People Act, then Senator Sinema would accompany him almost certainly. I want to know if he himself personally finds anything in the For the People Act objectionable outside of what republicans tell him.
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His complaints about the bill have been that it is not supported by republicans in Congress and this makes it partisan which means it should not be supported and that local election officials should make election policy. He says that both parties are seeking to use this topic for partisan advantage. Since voter fraud is exceptionally rare and based upon the statement of Lindsay Graham , then certainly republicans are using this topic for partisan advantage. However, that would not matter if what they were doing was right. He claims to know that democrats are trying to use this topic for partisan advantage. However, that would not matter if what they are doing is right. The only thing that really matters here is what is right. Let’s suppose that he doesn’t know what voter suppression is and he is ignorant about Jim Crow, then he can learn about them because that information is available. Voter suppression is wrong if everybody supports it and nobody opposed it. Voter suppression is wrong if everybody opposes it. Popularity is not a good test for what is true or right. What defense can he argue for the position that popularity among republicans is a valid test for whether or not it is right to suppress the vote of people of color, especially African Americans ? None clearly. His only argument here seems clearly to be that the law won’t be trusted if it is not supported by members of both parties in Congress. What that turns out to mean is that republican voters won’t trust the law if republicans in Congress don’t vote for it. That doesn’t mean that the legislation is not morally good. It stops voter suppression. This makes it a good bill. It makes it easier to vote which is healthier for democracy since as shown before voting by mail is secure.
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The question he needs to ask himself is why do republicans in Congress oppose the For the People Act . The links and the republican history of supporting voter suppression make it clear that they oppose it because they know that the more that people of color and African Americans specifically vote, the worse republicans are likely to do. Since opposing voting suppression and expanding participation in voting is good and since the reason why the republicans oppose this is because it hurts them politically, then their lack of support should not be a factor in considering whether or not to support the bill. . Republicans in Congress don’t support a commission to investigate the events of January sixth, does that make it wrong ? If republicans in Congress support voter suppression, does that makes it right ? If he is troubled by the lack of republican support for a bill , then he needs first to remember that bipartisan is not a synonym for virtuous and that opposing voter suppression is good and then he needs to consider why they oppose this bill. Since they support suppressing the vote which is evil because it helps them in elections, then their views on bills that oppose suppressing the vote should not even be considered. Republican voters won’t trust the law. Yeah and why is that ? The reason they don’t trust election results is because Donald Trump told them that the election results were fraudulent. They already didn’t want their candidate to lose, so when he tells them that which they want to hear, then naturally they believe it. Republican voters are going to listen to republican politicians and the extremist media which they choose. Since the reason republican voters don’t trust or believe the election results is because of what they were told by republican politicians, then their views on these matters can’t determine and should not influence how you vote. Trump promotion of the big lie and the insurrection and the creation of and promotion of voter suppression bills by republicans are all tied together. This is why a democrat basing their vote on how republicans view anything related to voting is insane.
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Republicans want to suppress the vote because they can’t win otherwise. Voting by mail is the normal way to vote in five states including a republican state as well as expatriates and the military and people who work for the federal government. There is no evidence that suggests that voting by mail is less secure than voting in person. Since there were nearly as many people who voted by mail as there were those who voted in person and since even republicans affirmed the security and accuracy and validity of the presidential vote , then we can conclude that voting by mail is secure and accurate as studies have shown. There is nothing that republicans oppose more than voting by mail because it enables so many more people to vote. If there are any changes which need to be made to the For the People Act based upon evidence and research, then change it. However, it must, again, be based upon evidence and research, not political motivates. Then pass the bill.
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Joe Manchin won’t just be remembered as the Dixiecrat who allowed voter suppression to take place and a new era of Jim Crow to commence because bigoted republicans would not oppose voter suppression, but he will also be remembered as the democrat who allowed republicans to remove our democracy . We are rapidly approaching the time when the attempt to cajole Manchin into doing the right thing and committing to do whatever it takes to pass our democracy bills to undo voter suppression must come to an end. Soon we will know if any of the carrots and attempts to reason with him can yield any results . If they don’t yield any results soon, then we might as well call him out for what he is doing. Soon, we really should shame him. That probably won’t alter his position, but it is the right thing to do. There have to be consequences when a person of that responsibility and who has that kind of power in your power utterly abandons not only the values of his Democratic Party but also the values of the country. He is betraying the values of racial and ethnic justice and the right to vote and even democracy itself.
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Professor Tribe, considered by many legal minds, to be the leading constitutional scholar in the world said that Barack Obama was one of the very best student he ever had. He was the Editor in Chief of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. He was offered a tenure track law professor position multiple times by the University of Chicago. He served as a state senator for eight years. Then, he had to win the primary for the US Senate seat for Illinois. Now, there was no shortage of candidates (15 ! ) for the US Senate seat for a large and diverse state like Illinois. Voters believed that he demonstrated the education and character and intelligence and leadership to be the nominee for the Democratic Party. Had he not, then certainly he would not have won a landslide majority of the vote. It’s not like he didn’t even win a plurality of the vote like a certain presidential candidate. Illinois has voted for republicans previously for US Senate and there were numerous choices in the primary. He had to convince the voters that he was ready . He began serving as US Senator from Illinois. Then, due to another republican president leading us into yet another republican recession, it was clear that change was needed. Then Senator Obama was running against another Ivy League J.D. , Senator Hillary Clinton who was in her second term as US Senator representing New York. There were numerous debates. It was widely recognized how experienced Senator Clinton was. If there had been any doubt at all about Senator Obama’s preparation and whether he was ready for the moment, Democratic Party voters would have been very happy to vote for Senator Clinton. Voters compared Senator McCain with Senator Obama and Senator McCain with President George W Bush and realized that Senator McCain would mean going in the same direction which had led them into a ditch. President Obama had won Indiana, a very republican state which was familiar with him, and North Carolina on his way to an 8 point popular vote win and electoral college landslide.
The results indicated the voters were right. President Obama led the country into the longest consecutive peacetime private sector job growth period that the country had ever known. He saved the Big three automakers. He got the Affordable Care Act passed which brought the percentage of the covered in the population to 90%. The ACA required insurers to put 85% of premiums towards care. They allowed those up to age twenty six to stay on their parents’ coverage which prevented the insurers from being stuck with only older, sicker patients. The ACA eliminated the donut hole which hurt so many seniors who could not afford their medication. Finally, the ACA also eliminated the ability of insurers to discriminate against those who have pre-existing conditions. Although it was risky and he was told that there was a probability of success but not a certainty at all and he knew that if the mission failed, he would be harshly criticized , he approved the successful strike on Bin Laden. The country joined the Paris Accords which was joined by every nation save one. He got approval for the Iran Treaty which experts had deemed successful. While there were four people lost in Benghazi which somehow republicans found unforgiveable while being perfectly fine with 3,000 people lost on September 11, President Obama was re-elected in wider than expected margins.