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Trump is what Obama critics think Obama is: Someone who's focused on symbolism rather than substance.

Jonathan Chait

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Jonathan Chait
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: January 1
Columnist
Commentator
Journalist
the United States of America
Critics
Focused
Obama
Trump
Rather
Someone
Think
Symbolism
Thinking
Substance

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The story of the Republican Party is of a far-right that has moved from the fringes of the party to a complete domination of the party. The moderate, mainstream and pragmatic leaders of the party have been pushed out or died off.
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Liberals tend to romanticize the past, past leaders' failures.
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That's an important Obama accomplishment: he raised taxes back to Bill Clinton levels, and made a major dent in inequality doing so. That's certain to be reversed, that's going to disappear. The Republicans are going to slash the rich's taxes.
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We're not going to be living in a world of abundant coal power in a hundred years.
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Barack Obama is extremely smart.
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In the long run, however much damage we come through, Obama's vision is the one that's going to be left standing. It's a question of how much pain and suffering America has to endure in the meantime.
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Barack Obama is a very impressive human being.
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President Obama is so much smarter and a better communicator than members of Congress in either party. The contrast, side by side, is almost ridiculous.
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One of the things we've learned during the Obama era is how important norms are, because we've seen how the Republican Party behaved against Obama. So much of what they did was to smash pre-existing norms, which were nothing more than assumptions of how people would behave, which didn't have any real basis in rules or limits.
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I never thought Hillary Clinton was a very good politician.
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Obamaism is the future of America.
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Trump has a lot of authoritarian tendencies that need to be a serious concern.
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Conservatives are much more comfortable supporting the leader who's in power than liberals.
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