A few points here Mein.

It's interesting to note what percentage of the population votes in particular elections. Normally, about 40% of the people vote, and 60% stay home. This means that majorities are won and lost with just 20% of the voters.

In the last few election cycles, the Democrats did very well. The reason for this was that voter turnout approached 50%. It will be interesting to see how the turn out looked with this election.

If the turn out was in the 40% range, then what that will demonstrate is that the Democratic base will not turn out to vote if you ignore their demands.

Democrats now have 1 of 2 options. They can fight the GOP to the same degree that the GOP fought them for the last 2 years. Washington will be gridlocked, and things will cease to get less worse less fast, to things getting worser.

The other option is that the Dems decide to "compromise" with the GOP by giving them just about everything they want, and things will get a lot worse a lot faster. This is the more likely of the two scenarios in my opinion.

As Mein correctly noted, this has been the 3 election in a row where the voters have said no to the incumbants, regardless of who the incumbants were. This is sign that both parties are entirely detached from the desires of the population. In other words, representative government is so broken that it is no longer functioning.

Time to reinvent the wheel.

Or maybe more accurately, what have I been smoking? because even though it is for different reasons of course, but I agree with your assessment. I hope the Dems and the GOP fight each other for at least the next two years and gridlock returns, at least as you said, "things will get worse slower".

I don't believe that the Dems will caving into the GOP except on certain issues like taxes, IMO a victory for the taxpayers. I don't see HCR being repealed, a loss for taxpayers, but I have already accepted my fucking on that one.

I disagree that this spells the end of the world as we know it, every time there is a crisis, doomsayers claim it is the end of the world as we know it. If Government will stick to what Government does, and business is allowed to do what business does, (with "proper" oversight of course) this ship will eventually right itself.

In the meantime there will always be people that will prosper, even in the Great Depression. My goal is to be one of those people, and right now my life is pretty fucking good.

The names may change but the song remains the same. The capitalist class will not miss a beat though.
They will continue their relentless exploitation of the working and middle classes with the help of their newly minted gang of lackeys.

Many will be unsatisfied because government (due to limits of physics) isn't giving them their promised 4-bedroom home, three delicious squares, cable TV, cradle-to-grave no-strings high quality medical care, etc.

Others will be unsatisfied because the voracious maw of a government struggling to fulfill the first group will be eating out their substance.

There will be other groups besides.

Just because people become unhappy and it possibly dawns on them slightly that the status quo is irredeemably corrupt doesn't mean they will be inclined toward any particularly favorable mode of action. If anything, the dominant mode of action is more likely to favor left-leaning principles as those who see themselves to benefit from left-leaning principles by nature will outnumber those who would see themselves to benefit from right-leaning principles.

We are not doomed yet. We will be supplanted as the world's dominant economy just like the Europeans before us, but we will not collapse like the USSR.

In a worst case scenario, the US will do what many other countries have done before us. Simply default on the debt and renegotiate, keep in mind the only thing that will still make in both quality and quantity are weapons. Our shit rocks where it comes to killing people, we are unequaled in the world. Nobody is going to just come in here and "take our shit" lol. The countries we owe money to, namely China are just going to have to suck it up and deal with it, the same as we did back when we were a creditor nation not a debtor nation.

There is a certain reality people have a problem understanding. Both democrats and republicans have brought us to our current economic situation. They equally share the blame. The U.S. will go the way of the soviet union. It will break-up. It is too polarized, to far in debt, and unwilling to compromise on cutting the spending of what is bankrupting this country....social spending. The U.S. may be able to kick the can down the road another decade but in the end, nothing changes...debt is debt and there is no way the U.S. can pay the debt down without nationalizing all business's.... The U.S. is doomed. The money we are taling about isane. 14 trillion 2010, 20 trillion 2015...and so on..