2008: We Saw What We Wanted to See.

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 Back in the winter/spring of 2008, during the height of Primary Season, when we looked at, listened to, and heard the words of then-Candidate Obama, - if Daily Kos was any indication of the larger thing, and for argument's sake, let's say it was -- we saw and heard what we wanted to see and hear.  

 We carried those individual perceptions into the August Convention, into the debates and autumn campaign, into and through election day.  And, like 5 witnesses to a traffic accident (multiplied by 13,890,000) -- who all see the same thing, and yet all see a different thing -- we carried those by-now-hardened viewpoints into and through 2009, right up to the present day.  
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  ^{Invesco Field, Denver.  August 28, 2008.}
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 But while there were over 69 million votes cast for Barack Obama (meaning over 69 million individual perceptions and understandings of him), it seems to me that we can, indeed, boil that vast array of perceptions down to two great camps.  Well, at least I have.