In the last century there have been only 4 US presidents who have won a popular majority twice. They include Presidents FDR, Eisenhower, Reagan and now Obama. The importance of two terms is that especially in modern times it takes 2 terms to cement a legacy.
Of course, FDR's legacy of the New Deal has established him as the father of modern liberalism. Eisenhower strengthened many New Deal policies and initiated infrastructure building with the interstate highway system. Reagan's major legacy has been primarily economic in creating modern conservatism with his supply side policies of trickle down and deregulation. His major emphasis being to destroy the New Deal. And now we have President Obama who was reelected due in large part to the failure of Reagonomics in creating the Great Recession.
Reagan's legacy is in tatters as is modern conservatism in the US. In The Daily BeastMicheal Tomasky writes about the end of tickle down economics.
Here’s something that happened in this election that has been largely overlooked but I think is a very big deal indeed. Trickle-down economics died last Tuesday. The post-election chatter has been dominated by demographics, Latinos, women, and the culture war. But economics played a strong and even pivotal role in this election too, and Reaganomics came out a huge loser, while the Democrats have started to wrap their arms around a simple, winning alternative: the idea that government must invest in the middle class and not the rich. It’s middle-out economics instead of trickle-down, and it won last week and will keep on winning.In the face of the massive failure of trickle down and deregulation which culminated in a rogue Wall St. which decimated the savings and future of the middle class the 2012 election was Obama's to lose.
Supply side was rejected. And in its place, voters went for an economic vision that says: don’t invest in the wealthy in the hope that they’ll decide to spread the wealth around; invest in the middle class, because it’s demand from a prosperous middle class that ultimately creates more jobs, and because doing that makes for a healthier society all the way around. Obama embraced this message late last year in his speech in Kansas, and even though I wouldn’t say he pressed it consistently for a whole year, he certainly emphasized it in the second debate and spoke regularly about it toward the end. “I believe you grow the economy from the middle out,” he said in a key October ad.[...]
Well, it takes a village, as they say. But middle-out economics is still in formation. It will be up to Obama, [...] and others to provide more definition over the course of a second term. But even if that isn’t yet fully clear, this is: trickle-down economics is over. There was a time when a promise of a 20-percent tax cut would have ended the whole conversation in Romney’s favor. But all it accomplished this time was to raise questions—legitimate and never answered—about how he was going to pay for it. Romney had nothing to say to the middle class beyond cutting taxes and watching the magic happen. But voters have stopped believing in that magic.We're winning.