President Obama´s second State of the Union address must be considered in the context of important economic and political factors. On the economic front, though the “Great Recession” appears to be over, the recovery is anemic, leaving millions of people unemployed, underemployed, with large numbers of people also abandoning the labor market. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans continue to be adversely affected by the home mortgage crisis. Both phenomena fueled a mood of anger, frustration and despair that the Tea Party Patriots and Republicans were able to exploit to score stunning victories in the 2010 Mid-Term Elections. Republicans captured a substantial majority in the House of Representative, reduced the Democrats majority in the Senate, elected 21 Governors and won control of 19 additional state legislatures. President Obama called it a “shellacking.”
