Well, we've lived through four months of the Trump presidency. The crazy thing is that there really haven't been many surprises, except perhaps that his (imagined) populism turned out to be a total scam job. That has been surprising to some but not so much to me. Donald Trump is first and foremost from and of the 1%, so for me it would have been more surprising if he had turned out to really mean it.
On a personal level, President Trump is pretty awful. It's possible that the fifty-year-old Donald Trump was more personable and capable of speaking in complete sentences (albeit still a jerk). But the seventy-year-old Trump is is a thin-skinned and weak-kneed whiner, and obviously in possession of some sort of personality disorder. The surprising thing to me is how many people still mistake bluster for strength, whether it's from Dick Cheney, John Bolton, or Donald Trump.
But, having said that, it is a mistake for progressives to dwell so much on the personal side of all this. The problem we face--in terms of policy and politics--is a Republican problem (coupled with a tendency of too many Democrats to tack to the neo-liberal center and right). If President Trump was removed from office tomorrow, the policy fights we face would be the same, possible worse. A President Pence, working with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan would be more dangerous than what we have now. The Republican Party agenda's on immigration, health care, income distribution, labor, race, war and peace, education, and..the list is endless...would be the same no matter which of the scary list of Republicans were president. Maybe worse. Actually, replacing Trump with Pence would be a gift to conservatives, one we shouldn't give them.
Instead, we should make the Republicans live with Trump, leveraging his unpopularity in order oppose everything. Focus on the policy and the agenda, not on the man so much. Slow down the agenda wherever possible and work for 2018 with a 50-state strategy.
