In what way were your expectations not met from the election in 2008?

[kentuck]

Do you feel that your expectations were too high? Perhaps they were unrealistic?

Or do you feel that you are a realistic person who knows what is possible and what is not possible but you still feel a disappointment over the last 3 years?

Perhaps you thought more should have been accomplished, even though the Republicans blocked everything the President proposed? There were no consequences for their obstruction.

Do you think the President and the Democrats did not fight hard enough for our side?

In what way were your expectations not met?

[girl gone mad]

1. How much time to you have?

Short story: I had pretty low expectations. I still managed to be shocked by some of the egregious policy choices, appointments, compromises, and statements the administration made. House Democrats managed to do a few decent things before 2010. Senate Dems were mostly worthless on the whole.

[myrna minx]

2. I expected the President and elected Dems to frame their own debate from the

perspective a Democratic point of view. Instead, the President and many, many elected Dems framed their arguments from within the radical right wing framing, rendering their own positions weak. I don't think it's too much to ask your own party to use their own party platform to form their debating perspective and not try to form a weak argument from within the narrow tea bagger worldview - see deficit spending mania of 2011. :shrug: It goes downhill from there.

[BrendaBrick]

3. Failure to execute global warming as a priority

Meanwhile...Buffett spends (and bets on) coal for the future with his multi-billion $$$$$$$$ purchase of the BNSF which will desecrate and then export to other countries (above and beyond domestic transportation), thus adding more CO2 to this already fragile environment of OURS!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNSF_Railway

http://cenvironment.blogspot.com/2009/11/warren-buffet-cornering-train-and-coal.html

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/11/03/buffett-uses-bnsf-to-bet-on-coal/

...and on the subject of said (misnomer) "clean-coal"?

The crème de la crème:

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/11/03/buffett-uses-bnsf-to-bet-on-coal/

Sure, in one respect BNSF might do a good thing via transportation in general along these lines...the bigger question is...just WHAT will be transported?

Lastly, Obama promised to re-install solar panels at the White House by 2011's end...(you might remember...the ones that Carter installed and Reagan later uninstalled) that (literally) did NOT need an act of Congress for Obama to enact, yet he fell short on that, and although it can be viewed as not-so-much a very significant action in the bigger scheme of things...still, it is a tell-tale sign of where his priorities (or rather absence of priorities) lay.

[Sapphocrat]

4. I expected nothing more or less than benign neglect.

Not much of an expectation, but it was still not met.

I also hoped the Reagan-like qualities Obama exhibited long before the election were not a predictor of his governance. I was wrong.