The Democrats are facing a backlash that will make them unelectable in the medium term.

A lot of people aged 18-30 bought into the whole "Bush is evil, Iraq is a war crime" schtick pushed by Michael Moore, moveon etc. The trouble is, hate starts to fade.

Here in Europe, Bush's reputation is recovering fast. Most of Europe's major (and minor) governments are Conservative. Europe's new president is likely to be Tony Blair - he could be installed by the end of this month. If Iraq is a functional Arab democracy in five years time, Bush will be viewed internationally as something as a hero. Already people like Nicolas Sarkozy are beginning to get frustrated with Obama's limp-wristed approach to Iran.

A lot of the sensitive, liberal 18-30 year old Americans who "hated" Bush are incredibly susceptible to European opinion, having spent a couple of summers here in their college years. They might soon start to wonder why they were encouraged to hate Bush so very, very much. They might question why they were asked to blame him for Hurricane Katrina. They might start to question the New York Times's editorial policy. They might wonder why they were sold Afghanistan as "the good war".

At which point, the death of conservatism could prove to be wildy exaggerated. Liberalism, on the other hand...

Party affiliation doesn't really mean in anything in the long term. The GOP is not what it was 30 or 40 years ago. Even if we see Republicans return to the majority in 2010, I'm not overly worried about realizing the Democratic platform.

Some of the biggest expansions of the federal government have come under Republican leadership.

The main reasons to avoid putting Republicans back in the majority are 1) they have a tendency to dismantle regulatory oversight of the economy, which is the biggest reason we're in a recession right now, and 2) they like to fight unnecessary wars.

"hate starts to fade"

So true. And probably why liberalism always wins. Conservatism is just hate of the new, or unknown. As we move along, and the new becomes familiar, the hate fades. What is conservative now was liberal 50 years ago. Liberalism always wins. Conservativism just moves from hating the newest thing today, to hating the newest thing tomorrow.

Democratic Leadership and their hysterical supporters who are auto-crying racism at every opportunity – regardless of the applicability – are partly responsible for Obama’s steadily falling popularity. Then there is the very obvious fact that despite Obama’s assertion that he is a political moderate or centrist, he is effectively trying to lead this nation and the free world from the far, FAR, left.

He gives speeches, pretty speeches, but then does NOTHING to try and rein in the ultra-liberal members of congress who created a vast bail out package that we will either have to print money for, borrow heavily for or tax heavily for, and now they are trying to cobble together a pure package of outright medical socialism.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan is going to hell in a hand basket and this political and military genius [that’s what the mass media claimed for him during the campaign season for no known reason] declares that the past nine months weren’t sufficient for him to get a handle on how to deal with Afghanistan and he wants an undefined amount of more time just to think about it.

Oh . . . but he has plenty of time to whore for the Olympics for his home city and to ignore the national news item called ACORN.

Yes, each day President Obama fumbles his way through this presidency, he actually helps to rehabilitate G.W. Bush’s dismal reputation and make the very people who SWALLOWD WHOLE AND UNEXAMINED all that glowing campaign propaganda in regards to what a wonderful and EXPERIENCED fellow Barack Obama pause to wonder in turn what a load of crap they got sold by a grinning mass media.

Democrats kicked off this world wide recession with their aggresive NON handling of those two massive democratic giveaway programs. The insistence that we MUST remain in Afghanistan, an unnecessary war? Why I believe that this person would be Barack Obama.

How strange is reality, eh?

Moody's had to downgrade something like half of their AAA ratings in a rush because they suddenly realized how badly they fucked up.

The private sector's notion of "regulation" hasn't been too peachy, has it?

I seem to recall the government nationalizing Fannie and Freddie thereby making good on their implicit guarantee of the two firm's debt, and insuring that holders of their CDOs would remain whole. Just in case you're curious, Fannie and Freddie aren't giveaway programs. They securitize mortgages and back the securities and prior to the nationalization, they were private firms. Fannie and Freddie's problem is that the market understood their debts to be implicitly backed by the Federal Government, which allowed them to borrow at extremely low interest rates, and get away with very thin asset cushions which mean the moment the crisis hit, they quickly went insolvent.

The truly toxic crap was securitized and sold by Wall Street. They gobbled up and securitized the sub prime sludge that was too poisonous for Fannie and Freddie to touch. They bundled it, sliced it into tranches, got the rating agencies to slap triple-A ratings on as large a slice as they could and sold it and the other tranches to investors. In many cases they kept the riskiest, but potentially most lucrative tranches on their own balance sheets. As a result, many of the nations largest banks suffered huge losses and their are no longer any massive pure investment banks in this country. It's Wallstreet, not Fannie and Freddie that enabled the worst excesses of the housing bubble by securitizing the worst of the loans. Then they went out and magnified the problem by creating a $40 trillion mound of CDS, synthetic CDOs and other derivatives tied to the housing bubble.

I find your post slightly comical. I understand the anger that is coming from conservatives, but I often wonder what it is they are so angry at. Lets address your claim that Obama is actually a far leftist hiding behind a veil of centerism. I actually wish that this were true. If you look at his actual policies over the last 8 months you will see a very centrist approach. In fact, I would contend that his desire for republican support has actually hurt him tremendously. FDR didn't ask the opposition for permission. He attacked their ideals and got himself elected four times because of it. Obama has shown very little of that political ferocity that FDR had, and I believe that is why his poll numbers have dipped.

As for your assertions to his actual policies: first let us look at the mulitple bailouts. I would remind you that it was Bush who began the bailout process, not Obama. Bush did so because he recognized that not doing it would be economic suicide. He had to put his own economic ideas to the side to do what was in the countries best interest. I am not an economist, and I suppose it is possible that had we let the big companies fail we would have come out stronger on the other side. But politically that would have been suicide for any party. Had McCain won the White House, I promise the bailouts would have continued. There simply was no other choice.

As for Afghanistan, I do believe that Obama will follow the advice of the military leaders. I think that you are disregarding one important development in the Afghan situation, which was the failed election that took place earlier this year. Karsai was Bush's man in Afghanistan and was supposed to help us secure the peace. He has done anything but that, often using America to fuel his own political interests. The corrupt election has forced us to reconsider our presence there. Had that not happened, I do not believe there would be any real debate today. To blame Obama for this is absurd. We should reevaluate our position there. It hasn't been done in 8 years.

As for health care, if you truly examine the numbers, both from out country and others, it clearly shows that what the government is proposing is exactly what we need right now. Accusing Obama of being a socialist is good scary politics, but it isn't practical. He is no more a socialist than FDR, who started Social Security the largest government redistribution of weath ever.

Finally, for the Acorn remark, I find all of this outrage a little silly. Does a large organization have some bad apples, yes it does. Any large company or non-profit has these. To say that it should discredit an entire organization who has done a lot of good for this country is silly. You fire the people who screwed up and move on.

Again I question, why are you and everyone else so angry?

Brit, it's a bit much to place all the blame on the Republicans for dismantling economic oversight when President Clinton could have vetoed the two bills in the 90's that lead us down this path. My biggest complaint about the Obama Administration is that they have allowed Robert Rubin, Larry Summers and others from Clinton's Treasury to back in after they were involved is screwing it up to start with. The Treasury Dept a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sacks for the last fifteen years.

The thing I find most amusing is how we think this a new problem, I had the chance to reread Theodore Roosevelt's speech on New Nationalism last week and many of the problems in the banking and financial industries where the same. Roosevelt decried the fact that special interests had to much influence on capital hill. The speech given in 1910 is well worth reading just to see how much nothing has improved in 100 years. Indeed I found much in what Roosevelt had to say about making America work for everyone not just the special interests. The Republicans would do well to look back to find their future.

In addition to their government-authorized functions, they had private trading accounts which the President of each company fought to enlarge with crap. Their bonuses depended on it. Regulators tried to stop them, but politically connected people can push back.

Fannie and Freddy also did weaken their standards for the mortgages they would accept. But they were slow to do and the Prresidents were afraid they couldn't destroy their companies fast enough to make a huge enough fortune.

One main lesson is how well - or not well - even dedicated regulators can prevent inevitably destructive actions.

Not sure the Republicans have a TR in the party. They might have a handful of guys who keep posters or placards of some of his more famous quotes on or behind their desks, but that's about it. I don't really see too many democratic versions either. Is there anyone with serious popular backing advocating either heavy regulation or dismantling of the too big to fail institutions (Fannie and Freddie included)? Maybe Kucinich or Ron Paul, but neither of them is going to find themselves a bullet away from the White House and Ron Paul is certainly no Teddy Roosevelt.

If I recall correctly in at least one of those instances, Clinton was faced with a bill passed by a veto proof majority. He still could have vetoed it, but the effort would have been wasted.

TR, that was my point no one was against either of these bill. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act had less than 75 votes against in both the House and Senate combined and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 had 60 votes against in the House and passed by unanimous consent in the Senate. My original point was it wasn't just Republicans dismanlting enonomic oversight but both parties willing to obey special interests. I watched Larry Summers in a video on FORA try to tell us that repealing Glass-Steagall was actually a good thing as it allowed BOA to buy Merrill and it allowed investment banks access to money from the Fed it would not have been able to receive prior to repeal.

Of course there is no one willing to force real regulation because they all want to be reelected, they know they need money to do it and by pissing in these waters the money will all be against them. Your right that no one in the modern Republican party is like Roosevelt or Lincoln for that matter but one can always dream.

in five years time,...."

Me, I'm holding out for the Second Coming and/or the Rapture. And I'm an atheist.

Long live the Empire!