Obama and McCain felt very different in the moment. Obama was promising healthcare reform with a national public insurance option, McCain wanted to let health insurance companies sell Arizona policies in California and voce-versa. McCain casually joked about bombing Iran, while we were already balls deep in two wars; Obama was planning on ending the Iraq war (though Tbf, I can’t recall if that was an Obama I or Obama II promise). Obama Romney was, OTOH, much more of an election of their character than their policies- as far as I recall, there was very, very little difference on the policy front, which is why that election was down to shit like Romney having binders full of women. To be fair, I eagerly voted for Obama in both of those, and it’s only in hindsight (and towards the end of Obama II) that I realized that Obama was really, really super moderate. But still, both of those elections definitely had the “oh fuck, oh God, the republicans want to start World War Three as a gift to Lockheed Martin, this is too important!” mood, IIRC. That got turned up to 11 in HRC/DJT, and I’m frankly a little surprised that you don’t remember this kind of rhetoric from that election, as it was even part of the DNC strategy of highlighting Donald Trump. The whole point of focusing on Trump was “look at this fucking guy, he’s unelectable, he’ll burn the whole country down, so you’d better hold your nose and vote for Hillary OR ELSE”. FWIW, I did hold my nose and vote for Hillary because it was “too important”.
Obama and McCain felt very different in the moment. Obama was promising healthcare reform with a national public insurance option, McCain wanted to let health insurance companies sell Arizona policies in California and voce-versa. McCain casually joked about bombing Iran, while we were already balls deep in two wars; Obama was planning on ending the Iraq war (though Tbf, I can’t recall if that was an Obama I or Obama II promise). Obama Romney was, OTOH, much more of an election of their character than their policies- as far as I recall, there was very, very little difference on the policy front, which is why that election was down to shit like Romney having binders full of women. To be fair, I eagerly voted for Obama in both of those, and it’s only in hindsight (and towards the end of Obama II) that I realized that Obama was really, really super moderate. But still, both of those elections definitely had the “oh fuck, oh God, the republicans want to start World War Three as a gift to Lockheed Martin, this is too important!” mood, IIRC. That got turned up to 11 in HRC/DJT, and I’m frankly a little surprised that you don’t remember this kind of rhetoric from that election, as it was even part of the DNC strategy of highlighting Donald Trump. The whole point of focusing on Trump was “look at this fucking guy, he’s unelectable, he’ll burn the whole country down, so you’d better hold your nose and vote for Hillary OR ELSE”. FWIW, I did hold my nose and vote for Hillary because it was “too important”.