In the left's story of government, the state is always the hero

I think this explains a monumental amount about how Obama has been treated by the mainstream media and how he’s viewed by his biggest fans (but I repeat myself). The coverage of the Iran deal, for instance, is suffused with how this is an epic struggle for Obama’s legacy. How every new Democrat who falls in line is a victory for Obama.

Ace does a great job discussing how the fight for Obamacare was seen through the same prism. The policy arguments were always secondary to The Struggle. The same dynamic happens on the right all the time. Ted Cruz in the government-shutdown fight didn’t have the numbers on his side when it came to votes, but lots of people didn’t care because they were invested in his epic struggle — and for understandable reasons. It should be no surprise that I think lots of people have bought into Trump the Story more than Trump the man. Similarly, Ben Carson, a deeply admirable man, isn’t selling a lot of policy ideas. He’s selling his (amazing) life story and — by extension — a story about America many of us want to believe in. That was the secret of Barack Obama’s success, too. He sold a lot of Americans on his story and to this day he never tires of invoking himself as proof that America’s not all bad.

Hillary Clinton is in trouble in no small part because she can’t sell the story she needs to tell about herself. She wants to make her candidacy into the payoff for some epic struggle of womankind. Clearly some people have bought it. But most people see her less as a generic woman and more as the conniving, controlling Clinton she is. It’s a funny irony that she’s a victim of feminism’s success. People see her as an individual — an individual they don’t like or trust — and not as a mere gender category.