This speech reminded me that Obama, who is supposed to be the ideological symbol of what the Democrat party is all about, is actually a left-leaning centrist. The things he said about how Trump is only trying to get attention rather than having any real ideological motive are the same things I've been saying all along, which almost everyone I know on both the left and the right have insisted isn't the case. The leftists keep saying he's motivated by a desire to oppress racial, sexual, and religious minorities etc., the rightists keep saying he's motivated by a desire to clean out the swamp of corruption in the mainstream media and Washington and look out for the little guy. They're both wrong!
I find it fascinating how Obama seems to have just given voice to my opinion of Trump rather than the opinion that most liberals seemed to have of Trump before then. Not only that, but he seems to have done it in a way that may have subtly shifted the liberal zeitgeist further towards that perspective without him just coming out and saying, "Your criticisms of Trump are wrong, here are some more accurate ones."
That being said, Obama misdiagnoses the root problem. He says Trump is the root problem, and that voting him out of office is the necessary first step to repairing our country.
But Trump isn't the root problem, he's only a symptom. The real root problem is that our country is already far beyond excessively centralized. People here have gotten themselves stuck in giant coalitions in order to protect themselves from other giant coalitions. It's a downward spiral of distrust and dehumanization made possible by corporate- and automation-fueled distance from our neighbors.
Not only does Obama misdiagnose the root problem, but he also demonstrates a lack of basic understanding of what ought to be a vital principle of representative government:
You DO NOT EVER stake everything that hundreds of millions of people care about on the actions of a single champion, because that single champion is an imperfect human being and therefore a single point of failure.
Staking everything on the actions of a single champion again and again for at least a decade is the whole reason we're in this mess in the first place!
If you really have to bet the lives and freedoms of hundreds of millions of people and the future of the human species on the actions of a single champion, that means you and representative government in general is already doomed.
But we don't have to do that! We've got other options. We don't need a political deus ex machina to save us. We can save ourselves!!
