Why do I feel like Hillary is being forced on me?

[pnwmom]

213. Hillary was not to Obama's right. Based on their Senate records, they were virtually the same,

with slight differences on particular issues. Progressive Punch rated her as a tad more liberal, but it was really a toss-up, depending on what issues you cared about.

The misperception that Obama was more liberal than Hillary Clinton led to many people's great disappointment when they saw that, as President, he wasn't as liberal as they expected him to be. I wasn't surprised though, because I didn't delude myself before the election. They were very close on everything except Iraq; and he was in a better position than she was because he wasn't in the Senate when that decision had to be made.

Obama's no-mandate plan was worse than Hillary's because it covered many fewer people. He opted to put the emphasis on lowering costs rather than expanding coverage. So there's no basis for saying his plan was more progressive than hers.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/how-obama-broke-his-promise-on-individual-mandates/259183/

Two months later he released his plan. There was no individual mandate, as in John Edwards' plan, and Obama focused primarily on price, not coverage. By design, he had not included everyone, as he said in Las Vegas he would. That did not stop him from claiming that he included everyone, but the claim was debunked by Politifact, Factcheck.org, and others, including his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.

That September, Hillary Clinton announced a plan that did put "everybody in." As the Associated Press reported in its lede, "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's sweeping health-care proposal, which she plans to unveil today, would require every American to carry health insurance and offer federal subsidies to help reduce the cost of coverage." It was Clinton and Edwards against Obama on the propriety of the state forcing people to buy health insurance.

In the Jan. 21, 2008, presidential primary debate in South Carolina, Edwards criticized Obama's plan for its lack of a mandate. Obama responded, "A mandate means that in some fashion, everybody will be forced to buy health insurance." Instead of going that route, his plan, he said, "emphasizes lowering costs.