You can't achieve a progressive or even a moderately realistic political agenda in a nation where the word "socialist" is used much the way the word "satanic" would be in most places.

As for uniting the American people...the only thing that seems to unite them for long is a "Pearl-Harbour type of event", if I may go by past history...a major attack on the USA by somone...and the problem with that is that it unites them in the very WORST way possible. It sends them out thirsting to kill a few hundred thousand or a few million "evil" foreigners.

I see no hope of uniting (in a good way, I mean) a public that is as bitterly divided against itself as the American public is now.

If I were an American, I would simply be in despair over the political future of my nation. I'm not an American, however, so I am not directly faced with that problem, just observing it with some trepidation and not a little horror from across the international border, that's all. We already have a sensible health care system here in Canada, thank God, and a reasonably decent and moderate society too. Let's hope it remains that way. There are no guarantees.