I don't see the parties as being either extreme right or extreme left, but a mix of a variety of political opinions. And the compromise issue is a difficult one when you have one party, the Republicans,who vowed from the start to obstruct anything that President Obama would do. In this recent article about the lunch President Obama had with Congress, which discusses compromise, not everything that Republicans wished to see was agreed to by President Obama but a lot was.

And the Democrats did the exact same thing when Bush Jr. became President.  They refused to work with the GOP.  You make it sound like it's only the poor Democrats who tried to work with the GOP and couldn't.

As I've said many times, it's both parties who refuse to work with one another.

I read that article a few days ago and it's a little too late for Obama to be doing that.  Again, one instance to prove lack of cooperation is the Affordable Care Act that the Democrats pushed through without even reading the bill in entirety.  No wonder Obamacare is such a mess.

Hillary Clinton did a very similiar thing when Bill first became President.  He put her in charge of developing a health care plan and instead of working in cooperation with GOP and the health care industry, she tried to force them to accept the terms and plan she wanted.  The resistance she created pushed them further away from working together on any plan.

No. I'm saying that when the GOP goes on record specifically saying they are going to be obstructionists and holding meetings right away to formulate that plan, it's an out in the open *strategy* that is odious to a lot of people. I don't know of any other time where the Democrats have said "We are all going to obstruct Republicans". That's different than not working on certain issues. I DO want to see compromise and to get things done, but don't want to see capitulation to some things simply because one party says "My way or the highway"

And yet, what issues did the Democrats work on with the GOP during the GW Bush administration, in the spirit of "give and take?"

I think since you're presenting that narrative, that you should be the one to have examples of why this is so. I don't personally remember the Democrats saying openly,as Republicans did, that they intended to obstruct George W Bush. That's different than having different objectives.

With the exception of 911 and the events where misinformation about WMD's occurred and the Congress unanimously supported Bush in sending our soldiers off to an ill-fated "war" in Iraq, the Democrats did not support any of Bush's plans.  They also blocked or tried to block most of the GOP's bills.

The comment that you put back to me makes it appear that you can't think of any and you'd be right.

Again, both parties have failed Americans.  There is no compromise or working together.

I think the current GOP is not a party that often considers the lower class, but they seldom have been throughout recent history.   The Democrats generally have been the more "benevolent" party... although the GOP would say that they do a lot of charity work, but we know that's not the same thing.

It's not simply a question of publicly stating a resolve not to work with a president, which I agree the GOP did; however, both parties are arrogant in their resolve against the other.  We hear politicians and parties say all sorts of things, but we judge them by their actions.  And we certainly have seen that both parties are NOT willing to work together toward a common goal, rather, they want to destroy each other and unfortunately Americans will go down with them in our ship.

I have never seen a situation where one party in Congress openly says they are deliberately attempting to obstruct the way the Republicans did from day one when President Obama was elected. My point is that if you know of some concrete sources that show that Democrats were plotting in the same way, post them. Voting against or with others on the basis of policies is not the same thing. If I vote for certain people to get into office because I believe that they will vote for the same things or values that I hold dear, I don't want to see them vote with people that vote against that. For example, social security. Republicans were for privatizing social security accounts. I don't agree and remember how the longer Bush went on the stump to push for it, the more unpopular he became, because generally, people want this. If there were Democrats that didn't vote along with Republicans, good for them. But I can't think of ANY instances in which Democrats said "If Bush gets into office, we are going to deliberately obstruct ANY policies he puts out". As you said, you know that's what Republicans did with President Obama and I personally find it odious. 

I saw an email going around the other day about what should be done to get rid of Congress, attributed to Warren Buffett. Looked it up on Snopes and while Buffett did say a small part of it, most of it was grafted on from something else. However, I liked a lot of what was said, which included some things such as term limits, having lawmakers be on the same systems they vote in, and limit their salaries, on the principle that these are citizens who go to Congress on the public's behalf and not to enrich themselves as career politicians. We have a populace in which everyone, by the very nature of our political system., has the freedom to express and disagree, and know that we may be represented by people we simply do NOT agree with and in some cases actively dislike. NONE of the people I voted for in this last election were put in office. A few of them I think are so extreme, like Dan Patrick and Sid Miller, that it's hard to know that I will be waiting for the next election cycle (or when their terms are up) to vote them out. IN the meantime, those people represent everyone, even those they don't agree with, but nothing requires that they have to vote with others, but right, I expect them to discuss and argue and compromise. That's not going to happen as long as Congress has become a place for people whose campaigns are bought and sold by dark and corporate money, to go to make yet MORE money for themselves while living apart from the very people who they supposedly represent.I believe our system is extremely weak and needs an overhaul to make it less susceptible to corrupting influences, but it's a sure bet that the people now in office are NOT going to do that or won't be able to. 

As I said, there is a difference between working to defeat something you don't agree with idealogically as opposed to saying, wholesale, as a quotable source, that you as a party are going to defeat anything that a sitting president wants. I don't see a source in that article, only opinion. 

Not in that article. If there's a place where Democrats publicly stated that they planned to, as Republicans did, block every single thing Bush might try to set forward, then there needs to be a source. The item you quote is the author's opinion.

Makes me think, though, overall, that the whole "Congress get things done" paradigm is a fallacy that depends on what the agenda item is and who is for or against it. For example, I'm against privatizing social security. I want Congress to keep it going (they sure seem to come up with plenty of money for other stuff, including Empire-Building) and therefore I want the people that I explicitly voted for, even if they are a minority in Congress, to fight to keep it. So I'm not at all unhappy that the Republicans were blocked during the Bush administration from privatizing it. The difference is a party that believes some things working to pass or defeat items that fall within idealogy and a party that defeats everything targeted at the president.

Yup, we're going to continue to disagree.