Obama represents the last stand of what used to be the Republican party--the Rockefeller, old money wing--which, since the rise of Western new money, with the ideological support of neocons and cultivation of populist racism and religious social conservatives, have routed the old Republicans and driven them into the camp of the Democratic party where they constitute the heart of the DLC -- but having won the Republican party, they want nothing less than total political control. Obama both offers them a convenient scare-target to stir up racial fear, & infuriates them because he seemed to represent a strong counter offensive--NOT of liberal or progressive interests, but of the Old Money, Eastern oligarchy. This makes sense both of Obama's coddling of Wall Street, and Wall Street's support of him in this latest debt ceiling conflict.
NONE of this has anything to do with 'democracy,' no matter how loosely defined. It's a death struggle between the oligarchs--the people be damned. When austerity begins to cut even more deeply into what's left of the middle class & people begin to wake up to reality... there will be blood.