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Cuz the man who gave up Universal Healthcare to give us fucking Romneycare while having total control of the govt really knows how to play hardball.
I don't like Obama much - his drone strikes and war-hawkish policy nor bailing out the banks when he had them over a barrel, but i'm tired of this bullshit narrative.
House control: yes, no question.
Senate control: barely.
Obama would not have even been able to pass his bank ~~robbery~~ 'stimulus' without three Republicans crossing the aisle to vote for it in early 2009. Yes, very much a man with 'total control' of the government..
Obama had just 4 months with senate control, and that whole time it was on a knife edge. 60 (of 100) votes are needed to bring legislation to the floor to even be voted on without filibuster. So for 'total control' a party needs 60 seats/votes in the senate. The dems had 57 in Jan 2009 at the start of Obama's congress, with 2 independents (Bernie and Joe Liebermann) who caucused with them, taking them to 59. Republicans had 41.
That 59 included Ted Kennedy whom had a seizure during an Inauguration lunch of Obama's (he was privately dying of brain cancer) and he never returned to vote in the senate - dropping the number to 58. Also, Al Franken was not seated until july due to a very close election in his seat and multiple recounts - until then the number was 57.
Long story short by September 24th they finally had 60 seats.. But democrats are not a monolith. Just as there are Manchins and Sinemas and other 'Democrats' in recent memory that are barely left of Ted Cruz, there were several of similar ilk back then like Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Ben Nelson - and their independent caucus member Joe Lieberman, mentioned earlier - who all fought against much of Obama's legislation, for example with respect to Obamacare they quashed any chance of a public option and single payer.
So did he have control: technically, briefly. Could Obama just run through any legislation he wanted during that time? Absolutely fucking not.
Obama the "war hawk" who just watched as Russia strolled into Crimea