I don’t remember when I first became aware of Obama, or what I thought of him or his chances at the time. But I do remember that he formally announced his candidacy in Springfield (IL), and since I lived there at the time, I went downtown to see it.
This thread has inspired me to look up some old threads from well before the 2008 election, to see what the SDMB thought of him at the time. I’ll link to a couple of them here, in case anyone’s interested, but there are a lot more of the same. Looks like he had a lot of supporters here, but also a lot of doubters who thought America wouldn’t elect someone so inexperienced and/or so Black.