I've been following politics for a while--I majored in Poli Sci.

Parties and ideologies change all the time. But I more or less assumed that the Republican party would slowly shed its social conservatism, at least on a national level, and because a generally mild pro-business and pro-trade but ultimately socially moderate and suspicious but not hostile to government party. The Democrats, I assumed, would continue Clinton's Third Way, being a roughly technocratic government-can-be-good-if-done-right and shed a lot of the more extremists from its roster that become easy bait but ultimately don't get anything done.

Sure, there were still going to be extremists on both sides, local politics was going to still be less mainstream, and it's wasn't going to be smooth, but the post-Cold-War coalitions seemed to be formed at the national level. The internet would set information free, and while we'd still have different opinions regarding scope and degree, we had what was pretty close to a consensus government.

I was very wrong.