Trump was the logical outcome of the Republican's irrational, racialized backlash to Obama that had utterly come to dominate the party's thinking.

In some ways, Trump is just going to continue the trend: by continuing the norm-smashing behaviour that Republicans used in opposition.

Trump was the logical outcome of the Republican's irrational, racialized backlash to Obama that had utterly come to dominate the party's thinking.

One of the things we've learned during the Obama era is how important norms are, because we've seen how the Republican Party behaved against Obama. So much of what they did was to smash pre-existing norms, which were nothing more than assumptions of how people would behave, which didn't have any real basis in rules or limits.

It's possible that the clowning and the buffoonery and the entertainment are a bigger part of what's happening than we've allowed. And that Trump is primarily an entertainer who wants ratings, and an undisciplined speaker, and it will all be less than we think. It's something that we have to consider as a possibility; we don't know.

There's an element of clowning and entertainment to Trump, that makes it surreal and hard to understand to what extent he is pretending to be a fascist or an authoritarian.

Obamaism is the future of America.