It took this current crop of progressives for the country to realize that only 20% of it is liberal and 75% of those liberals are socialist nuts and whacko extermists. This is going to be a terrible 4 years financially but it has totally discredited the left.
In part it should discredit the left, because it was a dem who repealed Glass-Steagall, but the heyday of the gambling occurred on Bush's watch. Would another president have put a stop to it? We can't know. The reality is that for the most part the repubs have taken the blame for the current crisis. It's their own fault, for associating themselves with the rich so firmly in the minds of the public, whose simple calculation is that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer during this crunch.