Until recently, the first year of Donald Trump's presidency seemed like an eerie mirror-image reflection of Barack Obama's first year in office.
The election of a president who represented a radical departure from the status quo instantly reinvigorated the formerly moribund opposition. Energized activists descended on town halls, marched on Washington, organized at the grassroots level, and won elections—including a shocker of a Senate race in a state where they had no right being competitive. This energy has so intoxicated Democrats in Congress that they've marched vigorously down some legislative cul-de-sacs, which included holding the debt ceiling hostage and shutting down the government over a non-budgetary matter. These tactical errors were dismissed as meaningless in the long run. After all, we'd seen this movie before.
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