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I think that is the sad truth of Obama's first term: regardless of good intentions, the office of president does not have the power to make sweeping change, which many feel is necessary. On top of that, Congress is so divided by partisan and regional interests that it won't make any changes either. The Republicans have a slight advantage in that their message as a party tends to be more unified, but even they are facing divides in the form of traditional fiscal conservatives vs social conservatives vs Tea Partiers.
I don't think Herman Cain is more than a flash in the pan at this point: for all the protests to the contrary, there are a lot of old-school Southern Republican power brokers who don't see blacks as equals and won't support him. Its some of the same racial undertones that surface from time to time in the Tea Partiers. Hell, just look at how he was under fire because he openly called Rick Perry's hunting camp by its name, "N*gger Head" (thus invoking the N word), as opposed to people questioning Perry's background that he and his family/cronies would call the place that. A lot of Cain's popularity is also bound in simplistic slogans (the 9-9-9 thing is a bad idea, regardless of the need for tax reform... not to mention the hay comics will make mocking it as "nein, nein, nein"). He needs a deeper platform to be taken seriously; he's like a Republican Al Sharpton, only his craziness manifests itself differently.