Trouble is that in the land of the free to invade any goddam country we want, there is a party of the far-right. At election time, it faces off with a party of the ultra-right. All the reasonably sane folks in the US seem to live in the North East ... they usually vote "Democrat" ... even when the candidate is a Southern Democrat. Southern Democrats tend to stand to the right of Northern Republicans
Seems to help if you are "born again" ... whatever that means.
Obama could have done better. A Republican dominated congress didn't help. But he inherited two unwinnable (damn, hate that word) wars ... an economy down the tubes ... a national image problem ... He bailed out the Big Three auto makers. That has proven to be a good move. Made progress towards making sure all Americans have health care. Job creation figures are good. The future of the economy is looking not too shabby ... the US has numbers that most European countries can only dream about. Foreign policy ... not so good ... but Clinton (what a sweet little ball-breaker
) is right on.
And it was good to see a black dude in the White house ... it's well within living memory that (probably Republican) good ol' boys was lynching niggas south of the Mason-Dixon line. We've come a long way since Rosa Parks.