On the issue of the economy, the administration had to take action. The Republicans objected to everything the administration did without every offering any constructive measures. If John McCain had been president, I think his administration would have supported the financial bailout, a stimulus bill and the GM bailout. No administration would have sat on the sidelines and watched the economy crash and burn in order to bring down the deficit. The Democrats approach to the problem was pragmatic. The Republican approach was idealogical.I agree, the reason why Americans are suffering is because of a civil war in the Senate and the House between two parties focused more on themselves and petty agendas and not the masses of people and its truly amazing how people flip flop between two parties who have been highly ineffective overall.
what's so petty about the agendas which separate the left and right extremes with respect to how to handle the same situation? i think the vicissitude is overboard, and if it were up to me neither extremes of 08 nor tuesday would not have happened, but simplifying the process of turning millions of opinions into US policy is naive. what 500 people have you ever seen act in unison? were they determining policy in the greatest nation on the planet?
i think americans are suffering because there was a really bad recession.
I think Obama had a pretty good idea that the Democrats were going to be facing an impossible situation at the midterms regardless what legislation he supported. Had he not taken the action he took, he probably would have been impeached so he took the lesser of two evils.