The Democratic Failure

As in the NY TImes article re: Obama not being the voice and leader we hoped for ("What Happened to Obama's Passion?"), we have ourselves a leader who wants something but is perhaps too afraid politically, or so worried about his legacy and wanting to usher in a new era of government cooperation, that he ignores the situation and makeup of his political adversaries and does not forcibly defend one opinion, one goal, and the best way to get there. We had a chance. Democrats had the majority at first, but without the figurehead leader, even the rank-and-file congressmen began to distance themselves from, at the time, the singularly defining goal of the democratic party (Health Care Reform). And even with that majority, because Obama wanted to usher in a new era and pass legislation with approval from both sides, he didn't just force it through. And then we Americans got a whittled down health care reform and even his own party didn't believe in it enough to stand up for it enough to get re-elected. 

Then the Republicans took over, and by now we finally realized that we were screwed. Especially now with the economy. It took that long to figure out that the initial stimulus wouldn't be enough to escape possibly the worst recession since the Great Depression, and now without control of both houses, it was too late for Democrats to push through New Deal type legislation. Because the economy will be horrible still come re-election, one can only hope that luck yields back Congress to the democrats and retains Obama, and that the democrats will have learned their lesson, and that a second chance will allow us to pick ourselves back to our feet.