[continued from previous message]   
      
   Trump's presidency can also be seen as a backlash to the social change on   
   issues like LGBTQ rights, the introduction of a near universal health care   
   system and the reality of a Black president during the Obama years.   
      
      
   A battle that will define an era   
      
   Wednesday's exchanges underscored how this election will decide whether the   
   dominant political strain in America is the populist demagoguery and   
   culturally White movement offered by Trump or the multi-cultural aspirational   
   crusade of Obama Democrats    
   appealing to an increasingly diverse nation.   
      
   The President's first response to the speech was to falsely accuse Obama of   
   spying on him in 2016, after a new report from a Republican-led Senate   
   committee confirmed multiple contacts between his campaign and Russia in 2016.   
      
   "HE SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, AND GOT CAUGHT!" Trump tweeted, twisting the factual   
   record about that previous election.   
      
   The President's reaction was a reminder of how he has based his entire term on   
   a tide of conspiracy, misinformation and demonstrable untruth.   
      
   But it also hinted at a potential weakness of Obama's argument, one that has   
   been made in less eloquent terms throughout the Democratic convention.   
   Speaker after speaker has said that Trump is a bad president and lacks the   
   emotional and cerebral qualities or the sense of national well-being and civic   
   responsibility needed for the presidency.   
      
   Obama got it half right when he said Trump didn't even try.   
      
   But that is the entire point of Trump's presidency.  He came to power   
   determined to destroy the American status quo.  Norms, laws, traditions mean   
   nothing to him since the presidency is just another stage on which to pursue   
   his personal goals and to    
   dominate the airwaves and national life.   
      
   His misbehavior and unconstitutional behavior that those who agree with Obama   
   find disgraceful and threatening to the republic itself is the reason why   
   millions of his followers -- angry at the elites they believe shore up a   
   political system that ignores    
   and disdains them -- are devoted to him.   
      
   But Obama rejected defeatism about democracy and said time and again the   
   ancestors of modern Americans had faced the same doubts -- from Dust Bowl   
   farmers, to Italian and Irish immigrants, and Latinos and Jews and those   
   repressed by Jim Crow segregation    
   in the South -- but had resolved to make the American system work.   
      
   "Any chance of success" now depends entirely on the outcome of this election,   
   he said.   
      
   "This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that's what   
   it takes to win," he said, calling for a huge vote of support for the   
   Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)