I didn’t expect it, as I had read Dreams early in 2008, when Hillary was still the presumptive Dem nominee. I can truly say, nothing that happened over the next 8 years surprised me, based on that book. Horrified, yes, but surprised, no. The man simply isn’t a cultural American in my sense of the word. He mostly didn’t grow up here, and his influences were not of the heartland American experience.
Nevertheless, I hoped it might happen, as the media narrative pushed it. But I darn sure didn’t expect it.
See the link in my tagline. Obama played from FDR’s playbook of crisis and division. Some of the FDR speeches in that link (a long booklet from 1939) have the same wording that obama used.
And I guess I wasn’t even thinking about the man that obama was, just the fact that a black person was president would put the racial crap behind us. Of course that was before he became president, as FreedomPoster mentioned, it didn’t take long (a month?) and obama was talking race and having the “beer summit”.