Someone tell me what the Republicans "gave up" in the health care debate when at the end of the day, the DNC was forced to resort to reconciliation to push through a bill that went from universal health care (or at the very least, a public option) to forcing people to buy private insurance. That bill is somewhere between an abomination and joke, with the punch line being that it might not ever even become enacted at the end of it all. Colossal failure.
I assume you're into the Bush Tax Cut extension that you'll likely never seen any benefit from either, but that's another story.
Obama doesn't have all the answers, but giving the minority party power - even after its policies of rampant de-regulation, deficit spending, and tax cuts (primarily for the richest) only served as a catalyst for a market collapse and the largest divide between the poor and the rich since the early 20th century - is not something he has to do, and the people that voted for him believed it was incumbent upon him to try to reverse the damage. Not further it's agenda out of cowardice.
At this stage, the only clear reason I'm happy he won is so Palin isn't VP. That is a truly terrifying and embarrassing proposition. I guess it might get worse as she might be the president in 2012 to give credence to the Mayan prophesy.
Don't assume. I didn't like the Bush tax cuts when they happened, but I can understand economics enough to recognize that repealing them now, in a recession, would be economic suicide.
Also remember that de-regulation largely happened during the Clinton presidency with a democratic congress. Clinto himself signed the bill that eliminated decades of financial regulations imposed after the great depression, designed to forestall another such economic catastrophe. As so often is the case it was a political move, occurring not long before another election.
After the repeal of the Glass-Steagal act it took years before the full effects would be seen, as banks after bank conglomerated into huge entities and the sub-prime rates climbed through the roof. Banks took on bad debt, selling it off to reap profits that wer merely shadows, electronic numbers, very reminiscent of the major cause of the depression: buying stocks on the margin and financial insititutions basing their liquidity on stock ownership. So the collapse, that started with the final bill that repealed the Glass-Stegal act, didn't really hit us until well into the Bush presidency.
In reality the Bush presidency had little to do with it, the law had already been changed, and they instituted the tax cuts in the hope of jump-starting an economy that was slowly being ham-strung by the rampant changes in financial institutions and the impending collapse of the mortgage industry (also as a political move to bolster support when the Iraq war became more and more unpopular).
In the end the damage was done. And then Bush and congress truly failed when they did not tear the banks apart and instead subsidized them. The fact that they were "too big to fail" was directly a product of stupid decisions made by politicians over the years, and finally signed into law by Bill Clinton,and Bush was too spineless to do what had to be done and let them fail to bring it back to some manageable level where one single entity falling apart would not have the power to destroy our economy.
Here is a timeline if you are interested. It is mostly non-partisan, and leaves out some key elements, but it tells the story well enough. If you really care you will research it more before spouting off blame where blame lies only in part, and a small part at that.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html
Again you have clearly bought into the democrats propoganda. Buying into the republicans isn't really any better. Seriously do some reasearch and think for yourself.
