Democrats are more responsible for this housing mess.
1. They back current public school education system. They oppose vouchers.
2. Their political base tends to be in high price metropolitan areas
3. They like a nanny approach to government
I wouldn't say #2. Democrats tend to back the middle class, with the exception of the DLC which gets backing from corp america (no different then the republicans, just different corp sponsors :))
The mess we are in isn't because Republican issue or Democrat issue (it's not party lines issues). The issue is that the government was too effective with a Republican controlled house, senate, and president. When you get a domination across the board from one party, the system lacks checks and balances, and things actually get pushed through, for better or worse.
I don't think the climate will change moving forward either. We now have a democratic house and senate. And probably soon to be democratic pres. The hardest hit will be the upper middle class, as I expect the Democrats start taxing this class more, in an attempt to balance the lower middle class and poor. The rich never gets touched either party. Expect big government oversight with lots of bailouts.
BTW: my definition of upper middle class would lump your engineeer making $100k/year. Not that much in today's standard, but well above the middle class.Really rich households will always find shelters and loopholes, regardless of which party is in control.
An all democratic government would mean another 4 more bad years at least of screwed up policies that don't many any economic sense, because you'll have this party be pushing it's agenda. For this reason, regardless of how bad the republican candidate is going to be, I'm going to vote for him/her. Because the government needs party balance for the economy to do well. If you don't like the idea of bailouts and big government, it's probably in your best interst to vote for a president that isn't the same party as the house and senate too. Either way, it's going to be a long shot for a republican president, short of have some scandal that breaks out in the democrat party.
I have more fear about what damage the an all democrat government will do compared to inflation, weak dollar, etc.