Did you read Krugman today?

Here's a snip:

Mr. Obama's problem wasn't lack of focus; it was lack of audacity. At the start of his administration he settled for an economic plan that was far too weak. He compounded this original sin both by pretending that everything was on track and by adopting the rhetoric of his enemies.

The aftermath of major financial crises is almost always terrible: severe crises are typically followed by multiple years of very high unemployment. And when Mr. Obama took office, America had just suffered its worst financial crisis since the 1930s. What the nation needed, given this grim prospect, was a really ambitious recovery plan.

Could Mr. Obama actually have offered such a plan? He might not have been able to get a big plan through Congress, or at least not without using extraordinary political tactics. Still, he could have chosen to be bold -- to make Plan A the passage of a truly adequate economic plan, with Plan B being to place blame for the economy's troubles on Republicans if they succeeded in blocking such a plan.

But he chose a seemingly safer course: a medium-size stimulus package that was clearly not up to the task. And that's not 20/20 hindsight. In early 2009, many economists, yours truly included, were more or less frantically warning that the administration's proposals were nowhere near bold enough.

Worse, there was no Plan B. By late 2009, it was already obvious that the worriers had been right, that the program was much too small. Mr. Obama could have gone to the nation and said, "My predecessor left the economy in even worse shape than we realized, and we need further action." But he didn't. Instead, he and his officials continued to claim that their original plan was just right, damaging their credibility even further as the economy continued to fall short.

Meanwhile, the administration's bank-friendly policies and rhetoric -- dictated by fear of hurting financial confidence -- ended up fueling populist anger, to the benefit of even more bank-friendly Republicans. Mr. Obama added to his problems by effectively conceding the argument over the role of government in a depressed economy.

A president who believed in the power of government to bootstrap a bad economy would not have convened a commission to study the deficit "problem" and headed it with opponents to social safety net programs; if there is any one thing he did that revealed what Obama's economic vision is, it was creating that commission - one that couldn't pass out of the Congress, so he used an executive order to do it - and the only people who could possibly like what it says about Obama's vision are on the other side of the aisle.  The people Obama and members of the Democratic caucus are going to "work with" going forward.

Who will own the economic catastrophe?  Better to ask, who will live the slump/catastrophe?  We will.  The old will, the sick will, the poor will.  The middle class that is hanging by a thread will.  The same people who always live it.

I expect we will bounce along at this bottom for awhile, and I expect that Wall Street and the Republicans hope to be able to create another financial bubble that will hide the real state of affairs and further line their pockets. I don't know whether they can do it -- but the ultimately the economy will end up worse off than it is now.

The party's leaders in Congress are standing by vows to slash spending immediately even as economists say cuts could further strain the economy.

Obama's only chance is to hope consumers come back in 2H11 through 2012 in a big way erasing a lot of unemployment and improving the economy (unlikely).  He also has to hope the GOP nominates a terrible candidate (not unlikely).

The GOP strategy has been to do everything possible to make the D's look bad at the expense of the country. They know that most voters do not follow politics and only vote on their well being (it is the economy stupid!), so now that obstruction is not the only tool they have, slash and burn will be the order of the day.

INteresting that the PPUS never had a chance but, here at least, it is alive and well. The GOPers have aligned with the discontented D's to do everything to get Obama out of office. Some commenters who were aligned with Hillary have even bragged about voting for R's this time around.