For all those struggling working people, the tens of millions unemployed, those underemployed, and slaving for stagnant wages, it's been nothing but ongoing disappointment, frustration, anxiety, anger, and desperation.

Everything has gotten worse, not better, as government of, by, and for all, for the common good has effectively disappeared, ironically under a so called Democratic president (who is actually a corporatist DINO) with no apparent instinct for governing for the common good and general welfare.

Roger Bybee writes at Working In These Times:  "Obama has fed an image of relative indifference to the needs of ordinary Americans while constantly reaching out to major corporate interests and Republicans.As Krugman has pointedly asked, "Why does the Obama administration keep looking for love in all the wrong places? Why does it go out of its way to alienate its friends, while wooing people who will never waver in their hatred?"

"The outcome of this pattern has been the demoralization of the Democratic base while never-satiated Republicans are fired up for November.

"With Obama's favorability dropping in the polls at a rate "among the sharpest ever recorded for a newly elected president over his first year," pundits keep asking: "What’s wrong with the Democrats?"

"Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? and The Wrecking Crew, provided the answer in a bitingly commentary that is all too true:

" 'The answer to the riddle is as plain as the caviar on a lobbyist's spoon.

'Democrats don't speak to angry, working-class people because a lot of them can't speak to angry, working-class people. They don't know how.

'Many of the party's resident geniuses gave up on that constituency long ago, preferring instead to remodel their organization as the vanguard of enlightened professionals and the shrine of purest globaloney.' "

And Robert Johnson writes at New Deal 2.0: "It is a very sad feeling, one that I had during the aftermath of Katrina, when the government reveals that it does not intend to respond to a crisis. It is a cold, dehumanized feeling. The tolerance of 9.5 percent unemployment, which is in reality a much larger number (say 15 percent) than the official numbers, is a symptom of dysfunction.

"...our government is seen by the population as favoring large institutions and corporate power, not people. Given the choice between perceived corporate welfare that enlarges our future tax burden and curtailing the government, many people now opt for the latter. Not because people lack the desire for services, but because we do not trust our political system to deliver those needed services. See a recent Pew Reseach Poll, which illustrates the pervasive perception that government economic policies benefit Wall Street rather than Main Street.

"Given the way the government behaved, insuring the powerful during the bailouts and after, it is understandable that trust has eroded....

"We are amidst a breakdown. An irrational macroeconomic strategy and a nonsensical growth strategy....Deterioration of government services is bad enough, but imposing austerity due to lack of trust in a time of high unemployment and slack resources is tragic. It is a means to accelerate the decline of living standards of those who have taken a beating since 2007....Our leaders, showing their fear by responding to the fearful polling results are not leading."