Will President Obama really help the middle class this time (talking about the tax cut extension)?

[Egalitarian Thug]

34. The time to act, as was pointed out for two straight years, was before the mid-term.

That is President Obama's greatest mistake. Just as he was warned and has transpired, we are living exactly what he was told would be the result of his insistence on pissing away two years, and our futures, trying to make people that hate him, like him.

Has he learned the lesson? Who knows. The job is much harder today and he has no capital, no allies, and precious little credibility. Add to this that he's in campaign mode, and I wouldn't bet on his ability to accomplish much of anything good in his second term. Hope I'm wrong, we'll see.

There are several reports, they were all over DailyKos and I'm sure they're here as well, that show what the differences would be today had the cuts been allowed to expire. We would still be in big trouble, but significantly better off in several areas especially in the credibility department. Hell one guy alone escaped several hundred million in taxes by dying after the extension. It's not the debt or even the deficit, it's the lack of funding for existing programs, it's the lack of help for overburdened state budgets and the current lack of capacity to do much of anything because the money simply isn't there while demand continues to outstrip supply.

Every time somebody that can pay taxes doesn't, it hurts all of us. In the 40's, the U.S. starting with almost nothing, financed conquering the world through corporate taxes and selling war bonds, now we expect the poorest to pay more and the richest to pay nothing. What could possibly go wrong with that?