That'd never happen, even WITHOUT the democrat-esque tendency towards self-sabotage.
I mean, throughout the last eight years, we've had 9/11, Katrina, skyrocketing gas prices, a horribly mismanaged economy that led to the worst recession since the Great Depression, two mismanaged wars, and the Vice President shooting a man in the face. By the end of Clinton's administration, gas prices were low enough that Hummers were considered "cheap", we had a great big surplus, and everyone was genuinely pretty happy. Clinton got impeached, the worst Bush got were a pair wingtips.
Clinton wasn't actually impeached, enjoyed decent popularity, and the whole thing was shown as an idiot parade when the Dems made gains in the Senate and the next presidentialial election was a coin flip despite the most boring man in the world, and a former vice president at that, running (this is important from a statistical perspective).
If you are referring to his legislative failures, then sure. Bush rode on a tide of artificial paranoia and authoritarianism not seen since Wilson, so I'm not really surprised he got away with that much bullshit. It's not like Republicans are special or anything.
And the House Democrat's lived off of FDR's programs until
1994 when Southern
racism culture diverged from the original New Deal coalition. LBJ also helped, but it's less noticed with the whole Vietnam War thing.
It's not like Americans have grown
dumber since 1950 or something. If the 40 million (I believe) uninsured gain basically free/cheap healthcare with the public option, whammo instant Democratic voters for life. Single payer would be an improvement, but whatever.
Maybe when not a single Republican votes for a bill they compromised on - for what, the third time? - they might learn. It has to happen
eventually.
The simple fact that the Republicans stood a chance in '08 is outright horrifying. And it doesn't matter what the Democrats do, what good they accomplish, how many millions of people are well-off because of them -- the Republican party at large is such a vile mess of inhuman scum that they'll do everything in their vast power to destroy the accomplishments and humanitarianism of the Left, including inciting the easily misled or otherwise painfully stupid (many of whom in fact have the most to gain from Democratic policies) into violence.
This has been true for quite a while and Democratic presidents have, in fact, been popular and passed successful legislation. I mean, that's like the 60's in a nutshell.
The entire problem with this whole debacle is that both parties have been sucking blood from Reagan's corpse with their neoliberals and free market worship on either side. The Republicans did it because they don't have any comparable demagogues (still don't) and the Democrats had Clinton, who failed to get healthcare reform and had a stunning loss in 1994 right after. Clinton was basically declawed and acted like the best Republican president ever after that. PARALLELS.
Of course, the Republicans are in retreat, hating banks and the financial sector is fashionable again, and the Democrats still acting like neoliberals/Republicans because they want to be better corporate shills than Republicans, despite Obama's entire individual donation thing making this advantage moot.
tl;dr while Americans are stupid the Democratic leadership is at fault because they are
fucking morons who can't pass Propaganda 101 and trick poor people into taking free things.
