Are educated, intelligent adults allowed to complain that they didn't get what Obama's smiling 2008 campaign persona made them feel they could get?

Ah, it's a free country. You can complain about anything you want, but you look foolish if you don't take responsibility for your own gullibility.

Thomas Frank interviews Cornel West:

Frank: I... remember... being impressed by Barack Obama who was running for president... I sometimes thought that he looked like he had what this country needed... That was a huge turning point, that moment in 2008, and my own feeling is that we didn’t turn.

West: No, the thing is he posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair.... 

Another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair? That's what I hoped I might get when I voted for Obama in 2008. He never assured us he'd be a left-winger, but some people — people who wanted that — projected their hope onto him, and of course, he invited everyone to see him as the embodiment of whatever it was they hoped for.

West: And we ended up with a brown-faced Clinton. 

That's crudely stated, and I wouldn't talk like that, but that's about exactly what I hoped for. A pragmatic centrist like Bill Clinton, and as a bonus, we get the first African American President. I didn't vote merely on that hope. It was also the case that John McCain lost me. It's always only a choice between 2 (or, rarely, 3) candidates. You can't get everything you want, and you can't know everything about what you are getting.

Frank: Is there anybody who thinks he’s progressive enough today?

West: Nobody I know. 

Ha ha. That's reminiscent of the old Pauline Kael quote — which I'll take the trouble to quote correctly: "I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them."

Hey, Professor West! Meet me. I'm an Obama-'08 voter who thinks he's progressive enough. He's even too progressive. I voted for Mitt Romney in '12 because he seemed to be more of a pragmatic centrist like Bill Clinton, and we'd have had the bonus of the first Mormon President. I'm outside your ken, Professor West, but sometimes, when you're on the internet, you can feel me.

Frank: There’s a lot of disillusionment now. My liberal friends included. The phrase that I have heard from more than one person in the last year is they feel like they got played.

West: That’s true. That’s exactly right. What I hear is that, “He pimped us.” I heard that a zillion times. “He pimped us, brother West.” That’s another way of saying “we got played.”

Who gets played in this world? Take some responsibility.

Frank: What on earth ails the man? Why can’t he fight the Republicans?...

Frank is the author of "What's the Matter with Kansas?," so the notion is: Something is wrong with you if you're not left-wing.

West: I think Obama... doesn’t realize that a great leader, a statesperson, doesn’t just occupy middle ground. They occupy higher ground or the moral ground or even sometimes the holy ground.... He always moves to the middle ground.... You go straight to the establishment and reassure them that you’re not too radical... These guys are running things, and these are neoliberal, deregulating free marketeers...

Middle ground... not too radical... that's what I wanted. Higher ground... holy ground... that's what scares me. That's where the demagogues want to take us. Government is not religion, and it shouldn't feel like religion.

West: I think part of it is just temperament. That his success has been predicated on finding that middle ground. “We’re not black. We’re not white. We’re not rich. We’re not poor. There’s no classes in America. We are all Americans. We’re the American family.” He invoked the American family last week. 

Yes, and that temperament was what got him elected. Go back and read, for example, Mara Liasson at NPR, writing in September 2008, "Even-Keeled Obama Built Image On Bridging Divides." ("He has reacted with characteristic cool and caution to the Wall Street financial crisis, holding back at times while his rival charged ahead. His campaign mantra is 'No Drama Obama.'")

West continues:

West: It’s a lie, brother. 

If it's a lie, it's the lie that got him elected. If it's a lie, he was posing — posing as a centrist. But West wants to say he was posing as a progressive. When? Where? For which voters? Not the centrist voters like me who made his election possible.

West: You’ve got to be able to tell the truth... We’re not a family. We’re a people... And a nation always has divisions... and your foreign policy is running amok with Israelis committing war crimes against precious Palestinians and you won’t say a mumbling word about the Palestinian children. What is history going to say about you? Counterfeit! That’s what they’ll say, counterfeit. Not the real thing.

The "real thing" that West wants is a real thing that Americans would not have elected.