I turned 22 a few weeks ago. I was only 19 at the time of the 2008 elections. At the time, I worked at a personal injury law firm (yuck) working on interrogatories. In my free time, I did follow the election and the political news quite closely.
My main source of news, then, was mostly mainstream blogs. Ezra Klein, the NYT, and also the stable of Atlantic bloggers, Andrew Sullivan, Ta-Nehisi, Fallows, etc. In that time, Andrew Sullivan was at his leftmost, and bitterly critical of Bush; and he spent a good deal of time apologizing profusely for his support of the Iraq War. The pro-obama consensus was really quite strong at that time.
Let me say a few things on the 'obamamania' madness that had taken hold in late 2008, especially among young people. I can't speak for young people as a whole, but I do feel like what I saw and felt and heard may be of use to all of you on this list.
People who were 18-22 at the time of the '08 elections came of age during the Bush years. Now, I've read alot of the reminiscing from some of these posters, Chuck Grimes about UCB in the 60's, or Proyect about Bard, and it seems worlds away from the world that youth face today. If they don't fall into the right-wing maw, coming to believe in the resent/supremacist/free market cocktail, then they fall into being a 'progressive democrat,' or they fall into a late-Soviet-Union type of deep political apathy and disillusion, an active aversion to anything political, because it is so 'pointless.' The phrase "it's all so pointless," is something I heard over and over from many different college students, high school students, men, women, etc.
This fact, coupled with the progressive posturing of the Democratic Congress, made it seem like Bush and the Republicans were the issue. Democrats and their stenographers and their apologists shrilly cried foul over Bush's civil-liberties violations, over his unilateral foreign policy, over his blatantly corporatist domestic policy. Now, it may seem foolish to some of you that young people took these statements as statements of principle, and not just vote-getting promises/lies. It fooled me, and I consider myself both fairly well-informed and clever enough to know when I'm being fed bullshit.
I have a large amount of personal bitterness/anger/resentment towards Obama, personally, and towards the Democratic Party more generally, for having played this trick on me. I don't believe I'm alone in that, at least not among my age cohort. Not a thing has been done about civil liberties. Not a thing has been done about the cost of college. Not a thing has been done about the unemployment situation. Frankly, there was a 'feeling' in the air that I remember quite clearly. It felt like if our generation could get a black man in office, after the legacy of racism and slavery, then we'd sure as hell be able to get universal healthcare, serious reforms on a scale of FDR, etc. The anticipation of his election, and the relief at his defeat of McCain felt frankly like a socialist revolution. Of course, this was wrong, and far from the truth, but so many people believed that Obama, and yes, the Democrats, could finally undo the Reagan-era counter-revolution. And, given the economic crisis at the time, and the example of the New Deal, many people thought it was necessary and possible.
One girl I knew, a rather rich one, did alot of campaign work for Obama. She would say, back then, that her parents needed to pay a higher tax rate. Nowadays she lives in Chicago and works for the Oprah Winfrey Network. She's going to work for the 2012 campaign. Her economic class, liberal, well off, is the one that has done exceedingly well these past few years.
I know a guy, a good friend of mine. Never been to college. He's a guitarist in a metal band. He voted for Obama, doesn't follow news that much at all. But, he knows enough to be attracted to Communism. He knows nothing of Marx, or economics, or political economy. He knows that the social inequality of american democratic capitalism is enough to make the example of communism an attractive one. Regardless of the Soviet Union.
I have another friend, who voted for Obama. He's in college, and well-informed. He jokes frequently about how Obama signs his 'welfare' checks. By welfare checks, he means financial aid. He jokes about praying to Obama, 'save me Obama, I need some money to buy some smokes.' He's leftwing, but scorns Obama. He has in fact been going to Tea Party meetings, and 9/12 meetings to try and get a better handle on the type of people who gravitate towards that type of political grouping. He frankly pities them, but he knows that he'd be really really really really hard-pressed trying to explain to them where their true interest lies. He met one guy who owns a gun shop, and this gunshop owner rants about 'liberals' trying to run him out of business, totally ignoring the land-developers trying to build a condo complex that are gunning for him. My friend thinks that these people can only be 'reached' through Huey Long style 'talk right, walk left,' appeals. I agree with him, though I'm not sure how best to do this.
I'm certain that if Obama had prosecuted the bankers, pushed for single-payer, and actually did what the young expected of him, he would have had huge amounts of grassroots support, and, what's more, could have kept the republicans on the defensive, and controlled the discourse. But,as soon as he was elected, he tried to put a brake on progressive energies and activism, and that 'feeling,' too quickly trickled down into the conscious or subconscious understandings of the young people who worked hard, campaigned, contributed, or argued with their neighbors and family (many young people argued for Obama against their reactionary/racist relatives, a hard task; and now one that leaves them embarassed and impotent against these same relatives who can rightfully say, 'i told you so').
Nowadays, I am aware that closer scrutiny of Obama's record would have revealed him to be a Blue-Dog Democrat (at best). I am also aware that he is nothing if not an 'agent of capital,' not of the people. However, even so, it was plausible, at least once, that he was going to act in the enlightened long term self interest of capital and American imperialism (back when I was a progressive democrat, my reading of the situation largely rested on this same line of thought; how counter-productive Bush's policies, wars, etc., were for the American hegemony, how a little bit of enlightened "Marshall Plan" imperialism would go much further than "war on terror" imperialism...).
Looking forward, I don't think Obama will win. The youth will sit out the election, as they no longer see any meaningful differences between Obama and the GOP.