The subject line is more negative than I really want, but a response to the OP subject line.
Look, I shudder to think of what we'd have lived through with 8 years of McCain. It'da been a bunch of austerity nonsense and tax cuts for the rich. We'd still be in a huge funk, and we'd be without an auto industry.
None the less, I don't elect democrats to not be as bad as republicans. As the article to which the OP points we must acknowledge that:
While these emerging signs of growth are promising, the United States remains a long way from full employment. One out of every eleven American workers is still unemployed. Further, many of those who have found new jobs have been reemployed at lower wages and history suggests that their reduced wages are likely to persist for years to come.
The stimulus was too small by half, and Summers wouldn't even consider what Krugman was saying about the size at the time. Geithner has admitted in his book that he was afraid to make the bankers lose their bonuses, and so he paid them 100 cents on the dollar for their toxic assets, guaranteeing that they'd make their bonuses. No one failed their "stress test" and was closed down. The 10% basically recovered their losses, presuming they stayed in the markets. But the middle class, especially the lower middle class, took a hair cut from which they may never recover. Even the White House has admitted at various times that their attempts to help mortgage holders under achieved. And Obama at one point said he learned there was no such thing as "shovel ready".
Yes, he was way better than the alternatives. But he has none the less left much of the American work force "hanging". Yes he's had alot of help from congress, to some extent even from democrats in congress. But at virtually every turn he ignored warnings from those who have turned out to be right, and followed the advice of those that were proven wrong.
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