The denunciations only feed the national obsession with President Donald J. Trump, a man whose opponents cannot stop talking about him. It is as if Mr. Trump’s own over-the-top style and rhetoric are virally replicating throughout our culture. Comparing the president to Vladimir Putin, Hitler or the anti-Christ distracts from what is taking shape on the ground.
We should be talking more about Republican efforts to deregulate Wall Street, gut anti-pollution measures, cut taxes on the wealthy, up military spending and amend health care in ways that will cause many people to lose health insurance—and less about president’s latest tweet or his personality flaws. [...]
At the point where someone becomes president, it is irrelevant whether he—still always a he—is fit for the job. He has it. Lots of people have jobs for which they are unqualified and unfit. It is disturbing that the presidency is one of them, but nobody claimed that the people’s choice was perfect, just that democracy is a better system than any other we have devised. In pressing their claim that Mr. Trump is uniquely unqualified to be president, liberals come off as sore losers and worse. If a wide streak of paranoia seemed to run through the conservative rants of previous years—“Obama is going to take our guns away”—more than a hint of hysteria characterizes many of the current liberal tirades about the president. Either the death of democracy is at hand or the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. Sometimes the two arguments converge to suggest that the election has been stolen. From there, it is not a far jump to say its results could be disregarded.
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