Trump Takes a Back Seat to Policy at the Democratic Debate
The president dominates every aspect of American politics, but you wouldn’t have known that from watching the first batch of candidates last night.
The nation is in the third year of one of the strangest presidencies in its history, with a capricious chief executive who has demolished both the old guardrails around the office and many of the basic presumptions of American policy. His administration has been so abnormal that it has drawn the largest field of presidential hopefuls in modern history from the opposition party.
But you wouldn’t have known that from watching the first debate among those Democratic candidates last night.
The debate in Miami, featuring 10 Democrats, seemed to take place in an alternative political universe. In the real world, Donald Trump infiltrates every aspect of American political life, and
