Jonathan Chait: “Experienced in the moment, Barack Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago felt like the rousing culmination of a pep rally, peppered with funny insults of Donald Trump and familiar soaring patriotic oratory. But if you read it more closely, an argument emerges: against Trump and also against Obama’s own skeptics, including those within the Democratic Party who have turned away from his legacy.”
“Obama first electrified his party 20 years ago at the Democratic convention in Boston with a hopeful speech disdaining social division. To Obama’s skeptics, Trump’s rise refuted his optimistic belief in the nature of America and called for a different kind of politics to respond to it: summoning an angry populism to counter Trump’s angry pseudo-populism. The case Obama made to his party is that his political blueprint remains morally and strategically correct.”
