I’ve been around for a lot of presidential elections and watched as the proletariat, in reaching for a larger piece of the pie, divided, and was conquered.
It looks like that will be the outcome in 2012. Rather than repair what needs fixing we’ll throw out the carburetor and allow a flat stone to be placed over the intake by an incompetent mechanic.
“In the winter of 1936, in Berlin, you could tell who were the Jews. They were the ones with shoes on their feet.” That was the, (paraphrased), statement of an old German woman not more than ten years ago. Hitler took advantage of it.
50 years from today will there be an old woman who reports that “In 2012, in the US, you could tell who was robbing trillions of tax dollars. It was the lazy old and unemployed people.”?
Is the US going to react to tough times the way Germany did? Many people seem ready to give up, (and did last year), who had a good start in 2008. They seem to think the football team will do fine with a great quarterback when half the team is missing. No, it takes two complete units behind the quarterback to win except in the case of forfeit. In this case; the House and Senate.
The other team is unified and never misses a “game”, where our side has had three players sitting out every game as “injured”. Our quarterback throws the passes but keeps throwing too low and getting passes picked off. He’s not getting enough, (or any), pass protection, and receivers are nowhere to be found.
The president can use executive orders to set things in motion. If he has a unified majority in the Senate/ or House a president can issue executive orders that overstep his legal authority and those orders can stand, but if the majority of both houses are opposed they can prevent those orders from being carried out very easily.
The other power a president has, (pertinent to legislation), is persuasion, the power of speech to influence legislators. What a fine, polished and persuasive speaker Obama has proven himself to be, but who are in the audience that can legislate? What can a Republican legislator be persuaded to do, let alone the Democrat impersonators? How much should the President attempt to cull out of this single minded group, because nothing is a very likely outcome if they are pushed hard, no matter what reality or argument is presented, no matter who presents it.
A few crumbs are better than nothing. There will be no crumbs if our team dissolves, running here and there looking for alternatives, if history is any teacher. Time after time, cycle after cycle, I’ve watched as Democrats with half of a power wielding engine ran off in disarray, splitting their votes, while Republicans patiently added one piece after another to their team in unison.
Yesterday I read about a Republican conspiracy to fund a “Green Party candidate” in an attempt to divide the Democrat vote in an upcoming election. It was discovered in a courtroom battle. I’m sure this takes place in most election cycles, considering the wealth at hand for those who want nothing less than the absolute destruction of anything resembling a happy, healthy US working class existence.

How much wealth? “Tens of trillions of wealth is concentrated in the top”, (now get this),” one tenth, of one percent.” One million, times one million dollars, times ten, times a number between two and ten.
That much money is in the hands of one, out of one thousand people. One million dollars is not enough to be a member of that club. The average Millionaire today is no better off than middle class Americans were in the 1960′s, we just don’t seem to acknowledge it.

The super, super-duper, unimaginably wealthy people, those you never see exposing just how ridiculously wealthy they have become over the last 35 years, can easily buy ALL of the airtime a network has for a candidate who promises he will do their bidding. They have already bought the networks anyway. They already pay for the “news” reporting and the slant they want us all to hear and believe.

Break ranks from the Democratic party, throw your vote to an alternate party candidate, bought and paid for by the Republicans, and watch the onset of much more harsh lives and deaths all around you when the lockstep Republicans ALL vote for the Republican.
OR:
Stick it out, put in a majority in both houses and keep your democratic president in office, and whether or not he truly supports us, (I think he has, as far as reality will allow), a majority Democrat congress will not have a Republican presidential roadblock, (veto), to overcome while cleaning up the mess the republicans have had free rein to create over the past 31 years of divided Democratic voting.

History IS repeating. The lead-up to, and undoing of the Great Depression saw the same parties on the same sides of economic policy as they are and have been for a long time. Coming out of that recession saw the same stands we now see in the two same parties. We overcame that recession, (or if you must; Depression, though there is little difference), with the installation of a Democrat majority that called for the same policies the Dems now call for. That is what worked then, and it is what will work this time. It is the opposite of what the R’s are calling for this time, which is the same that the R’s called for last time.