Is Trump a "mad aberration" or is he "rewiring the game in some permanent way"? "Watching that depressing debate, one must conclude that the rewiring is well underway."
Writes Maureen Dowd (NYT). It’s a paradox wrapped in an oxymoron about a moron: Trump’s faux-thenticity somehow makes the Democratic candidates seem more packaged, more stuck in politician-speak. In speeches and at rallies, Trump kicks over the traces, saying what’s on his mind, even though it often doesn’t mesh with reality, even though it lacks dignity and can be ugly and hateful.... At this point, the column is festooned with amusing quotes from a Trump rally that happened at the same time as the Democrats' last debate. Sample: He mocked the Green New Deal, saying: “That’s a beauty. No more cows. No more planes. I guess no more people, right?” Then he teased Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader: “Because Kevin is just like a cow. He’s just smaller.” "But how to counter this?" — Dowd asks. She wrote "the rewiring is well underway," but she didn't find that any of the Democrats had rewired. It's more that we are rewired and so we perceive them in