I'm not sure which straw broke the camel's back when it came to my love affair with Barack Obama. It was certainly long before the National Defense Authorization Act, which the president signed on New Year's Eve, ensuring that his successors will be able to detain any of us for as long as they want without due process of law. A couple of days after that glorious first Tuesday in November three years ago, when he appeared at his first post-election press conference, flanked by what might as well have been the board of Goldman Sachs to announce his transition team, a bad taste started to form in my mouth.
From the too-small-to-matter stimulus package, ironically pushed through at the height of his electoral mandate, through the secret negotiations with the pharmaceutical industry to keep prices artificially high, I quaintly, but halfheartedly, defended Obama. As we continued to use drones to kill innocents across the world in our quest to end terror (as if such a thing were possible), breezily deported record numbers of troops, and clamped down on whistle-blowers, I grew confused. As progressive African-American members of Obama's administration were targeted by right-wing demagogues, while the president refused to stand up for them; as promises for greater transparency went by the wayside; as the mettle to fulfill his promise to close Guantanamo Bay atrophied; as significant progress in our preparations to mitigate the effects of climate change went unfulfilled, my confusion gave way to sullenness and even anger.
-- Brandon Harris, "Blacks for Obama? Don't Assume That Anymore" (The Daily Beast)