Barack wasn’t awful but he fell quite short of Biden’s accomplishments including the two year super majority where the Democrats did fuck all except pass Romney’s healthcare plan.

TL;DR: The Democrats only had a supermajority in the Senate for about 60 days from the end of 2009 to the beginning of 2010.

Yeah, that’s because the Dems never had a supermajority for one year, and definitely not for two.

In Jan. 2009, the Senate had 57 Dems + 2 Independents who caucused with them (Sanders and Lieberman), which as you would note is less than the 60 needed for a supermajority. However, Al Franken had (barely) won in MN- the margin of victory was just a couple of hundred votes. The GOP demanded recounts and filed court cases to stall Franken from being sworn in (fuck, that sounds real familiar, doesn’t it?) and he was finally sworn in in July 2009, a full six months after the rest of Congress. That gave the Dems their supermajority, except a month later in August Ted Kennedy died.

Now the cynic in me will point out that Kennedy had a glioblastoma and it’s probably likely that McConnell was involved in the fight over Franken’s seat, knowing that the longer he could delay it the less time the Dems would have to pass whatever they could. And this tactic was mostly successful, since Ted more or less checked out of Congress sometime in March that year.

The governor of Massachusetts appointed a replacement for Kennedy, who was sworn into office at the end September. However, Massachusetts law meant that a special election to fill a vacancy had to be held within 5 months. It was held on January 19, 2010 and that’s when Republican Scott Brown won, and the Dems lost their supermajority.

In other words, the Dems only had a supermajority from September 25th 2009 to February 4th 2010, which was about 60-ish working days for the Senate. They spent most of that time getting the PPACA passed (and fuck you forever, Lieberman) but soon after that Congress ground to a halt thanks to GOP obstructionism.

He’s a great speaker though…