Now more than ever, I appear to have been right by prediction that when Democrats won the 2008 election, they swallowed the mother of all poison pills. The reason is just the simple economic cycle. Obama came in to office with an economy that has been radically changed and will likely not be the same as it was for many, many years. One pessamistic estimate is that unemployment continues to rise until November 2011 and peaks at around 13% and then begins a slow decline from there. The reason is that the economy is unable to grow at the 3.5%-4.5% rate that it was once able to do in order to significantly and quickly bring down unemployment rates after recessions have ended. We are more likely to see 1%-2% growth, which is not enough to signficantly bring down the unemployment rate.
Many now believe that Democrats could save themselves by passing healthcare reform. I however, have long believed that healthcare cannot be reformed with a public option with the way Congress is set up. Congress is a hellhole of special interests where anything like universal healthcare is dead on arrival. I had long predicted that we would never get universal healthcare and I appear to have been right once again. The only way to get it would be to abolish Congress and replace it with a national referenda system(which would not be a bad idea at this point).
People are right when they tell me this is not 1993-1994, because it isnt. Its far, far worse. In 1993 we were suffering from the aftershocks of a very mild recession and the unemployment rate was already falling quickly. This is a far more severe recession whose effects will linger for many many years in high unemployment and sluggish growth. Obama's approval ratings are already plummeting due to this and will only get worse for the rest of his term. Democrats only hope to win in 2010 is to tell voters to elect them as a check on the inevitable Republican admistration that comes in in 2012.