Yea Obama hoodwinked a lot of liberals including me, I agree with you that Obama vs Romney is not much difference except that with a Republican congress Romney could do more damage, and Romney's judges would be more authoritarian. I think their used to be a difference between the parties before Clinton. Clinton's "third way" reformulated the Democratic party to be more corporate friendly and pretty much decided to abandon liberal principles. Previous generation Democrats, Kennedy/LBJ/Carter, were actual liberals who believed in egalitarian principles. The Clinton/Obama school tries to be more "centrist" which basically means conservative-light, and they have been helped in this by the space opened up by Republicans' shift further right. Actual liberals have not been in power for over 30 years.