Civil liberties weren't one of the main things Obama ran on in 2008. Obama ran on the economy and on a fixed timetable for ending the Iraq war.
To make the argument that civil liberties were a key focus of the Obama 2008 campaign, you should be able to provide a Google News search query from (say) July-October '08 that demonstrates that fact. I just tried to find one and couldn't.
We are (mostly, and myself included) social liberals on HN, and Obama was the liberal mainstream candidate in 2008, so I think we tend to project things onto him that aren't really there. Obama is first and foremost a pragmatist. Closing Gitmo was worth less to Obama than getting health care passed.
To make the argument that civil liberties were a key focus of the Obama 2008 campaign, you should be able to provide a Google News search query from (say) July-October '08 that demonstrates that fact. I just tried to find one and couldn't.
We are (mostly, and myself included) social liberals on HN, and Obama was the liberal mainstream candidate in 2008, so I think we tend to project things onto him that aren't really there. Obama is first and foremost a pragmatist. Closing Gitmo was worth less to Obama than getting health care passed.