This Day In History

Michael Kruse: Nov. 4, 2008, was historic. Newspapers called it "a new era" and "a new dawn" and even "a national catharsis." It was hailed as a racially and politically transformative day around the country, and the world, from Boston to London to Kenya to Australia.

"This is our moment," Barack Obama said on election night in Chicago.

Here in Pasco County, Nov. 4, 2008, also meant this: 32 more foreclosures were filed.

This, too, is our moment, and it brings language of a different, much more grounded sort: "There has been a default under the covenants, terms and agreements of the Note and Mortgage."

Public records and story archives and Google searches offer admittedly incomplete but still interesting glimpses into the lives of the people who own these 32 properties.

They're not serially greedy real estate investors who got caught holding mortgages they shouldn't have bought with loans that banks shouldn't have given in the first place.

Not by a long shot.

Most of them?

Turns out they're … us.