Obama has left the left behind. By taking a so-called middle ground, he has moved way to the right and bought into the failed policy of low taxes as a solution to the economy. This policy which started with Reagan has resulted in growing national debt, wasting infrastructure, growing gap between the richest and 90% of the rest, bankrupted States and a shrinking middleclass. Democracy cannot work in a country on this path.
The ONLY way America can get back to the best of the past is if wages were to be equivalent across countries. And the only way to do that is to have international unions negotiating the same wages everywhere. That would force companies to make decisions on where to employ based on productivity, political stability, capital investments and transportation costs.
Americans could compete on that and jobs would come back home. It isn’t that ameicans are lazy or stupid; at least more than other countries, it is the difference in labor costs. Globalization has given low wage countries an unfair advantage that has not been dealt with.