A couple thoughts:

1. People who bought houses they couldn’t afford, or who foolishly put their existing homeownership into jeopardy by using the house as an ATM, are a separate category of problem than people who are about to lose their homes (or their rentals) due to unemployment.

As bad as a cascading foreclosure crisis is, and it is indeed bad, it will likely pale next to a skyrocketing unemployment rate.

The difference between the former and the latter is, in the former scenario, people wind up renters rather than homeowners, while in the latter, people wind up living on the street.

If you can put out only one of those two fires, put out the unemployment fire first.

Stop the economy from tanking and taking people’s jobs with it. For any president who is serious about governing, that should be the first and only job on his domestic agenda for the foreseeable future.

Forget the whales … save the jobs!

2. Agree with Krauthammer. Spending $$$ on nationalizing health care, crushing the energy industry with cap-and-trade and sending consumers’ energy bills soaring as a result, throwing $$$ at increasing the college diploma holders 4, 8, 12, 16 years down the road, does NOTHING to stop the economy from tanking and stanch the job hemmorhage.

Which leaves either stupidity or willful destruction of what’s left of the free-market system, and thus the private sector (as a competitor to govt) along with it, as explanations for the series of tax-and-spend debacles being rammed down our throats.

3. Health insurance and health care costs are indeed a big deal to the working class, and the Dems have scored a lot of political points off talking about (some would say exploiting) those concerns. But up till now the perceived crisis point has been EITHER/OR: either your meds … or the roof over your head.

What if the Dems, in fixating on health care, fail to fix the economy and cost working Americans both the meds and the roof over the head?

No “free” health care. No job. No home.

What then?