Obama was the last Democrat to run on change in the system

And, even then, he enacted a shockingly small amount of actual change.

He had the majority long enough that he could have codified Roe V. Wade, and increased the minimum wage, and done UHC and all sorts of shit, but he wanted to policy wonk both-sides across the aisle cooperation shit, and well, ended up passing the Republican version of UHC and bailing out billionaires, which really doesn't exactly reflect hope and/or change.

I'm not saying he didn't have problems, or that he had an endless mandate, or that he did nothing, but mostly that the "best" democratic president in damn near 30 years who had the biggest mandate you're probably going to find in modern politics still did a shockingly little amount of anything to improve or harden the government against clear nutters - the Tea Party was showing up, so it was or should have been blindingly obvious where that was going to end up eventually going.

I don't buy the (R) "do nothing democrats" line, but boy, they certainly make it hard to refute that claim in any form that's not a 1000 word essay which is why it plays so very well on TV/news/Twitter.