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It’s Not About Defending Obama 
There’s one point I want to reiterate or clarify about the posts from earlier today. We’ve gotten a lot of great emails agreeing and disagreeing with my basic points – I’ll be publishing several of them this evening. But some of those who on balance agree with me have asides like, ‘but here’s a case where I think we can criticize Obama.’
Let me be clear: this really isn’t about defending Obama.
TPM Reader JB on the road to Trumpism …
Interesting exchange of views among you and your readers on this subject. A couple of thoughts, for what they’re worth.
It’s probably useful for us to distinguish between things Obama did as President and events that took place while he was in office. The Great Recession was chief among the latter; it had a massive economic and political impact we are still trying to process over a decade later.
More on Obamaism and the Rise of Trump
Soon after I published the post below about Obama and Trumpism, I got a note from my friend Josh Green, asking me to reread this 2018 piece and let him know what I thought. Here’s the link. I recommend it. As Josh describes it, it’s basically “the opposite of your headline stating Obama didn’t lead to Trump.”
This is a welcome interchange. Because it allows me to elaborate on, and hopefully refine, my thinking.
Where Things Stand: Trump’s Shrinking Inner Circle
Since his Senate acquittal, President Trump has become increasingly paranoid about just how deep the “deep state” goes.
TPM Reader CR takes a simple approach ..
I see this election in fairly straightforward terms:
Trump has basically had his average approval rating written in stone at about 43%, and his disapproval rating in the 52-54% range. Since, by virtually every survey, this looks to be a huge turnout election and not a “base” election, those percentages should be more accurate than if it was a base election.
TPM Reader MR says it’s not all about the presidential horse race …
I’d like to expand on an important disagreement I have with a portion of your recent Editor’s Blog post “Don’t go overboard with this”. It’s a disagreement that I have with you that spans several of your posts, and I think it’s summed up nicely here.
You wrote, “Given the enormous stakes, you don’t just want someone who has a shot. You want to be sure it’s the candidate with the best shot, to the extent you can ascertain that.“ I disagree with this statement vehemently. I suppose this is the liberal version of the old “Buckley Standard”. It’s something that I felt was cynical when he laid it out, and I find defeatist and shortsighted in this context.
My discussion with TPM’s publisher Joe Ragazzo is posted in the TPM briefings archive.
It was a fun conversation with TPM Insiders about some of the difficulties facing the news business — from the decline of local newspapers to changes in how small outlets like TPM approach what they do to what Trump’s election has meant for us.
We also speculated a bit about what the future might hold, for us and for all journalists.