It's dictatorship if you use violence to impose your will. That's certainly one option, but it's not a very Western one.

And there's no reason why you can't impose your will for the benefit of the weak and disenfranchised. Chavez is a bruiser and an unsavoury character, but this seems to be an interest of his, at least in part.

As for finance - of course finance is more politically successful than the electorate, precisely because the corporates and Wall St have been able to force their will on everyone else, in spite of popular sentiment.

Obama could have changed this. It would have taken immense courage, but he could potentially have enacted provisions that would either have neutered Wall St, or - more subtly and most likely more effectively - moved the focus back to small business and direct community/government funding relationships, bypassing Wall St altogether, and then delivering a knock-out once the industry was marginalised.

Obama could have left Goldman Sachs to rot, and put the TARP money directly into the economy, or into smaller banks. It would have been dramatic, messy, risky and challenging, but it wouldn't have been impossible - even with a paid-for legislature.