Corey Friedl, a 66-year-old retiree clad in an Obama 2008 T-shirt, shared the president’s sense of disappointment and outrage.

Eight years ago, when Obama promised the crowd in Grant Park that a “defining moment of change” had come to America, tears were streaming down Friedl’s face. “His words were more than inspirational,” she said. “They were a reality that I never thought I would live to see.”

The years since have been tough for her family and many of her friends. The billions of dollars spent bailing out Wall Street were not enough to save the small community bank where she worked as an executive assistant. “All the money went to the big guys,” she said. Only recently had she noticed the tourism economy in Las Vegas bouncing back.

She had hoped that the election of the first black president would ease racial tensions. Instead, she said, it seemed as if Obama’s presidency had “brought out the racism that’s in the country.”