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Notes -
Oh, totally. But I think I'm trying to get at something slightly different. To go with a slightly strained metaphor...
It's more like George W. Bush was a basketball team, everyone knew it and knew that the communal sport seemed to be basketball, and so the Democrats trained to play and beat a basketball team. And they arguably got really good at violating the spirit of basketball while staying in the letter of the rules of basketball (or so it seemed, if you were not sympathetic to Democrats).
And then they show up to play basketball, and Trump is there, announcing that the actual sport is boxing. And the refs angrily shake their heads no - we play basketball here! - and then Trump cheerfully gives them the finger and sells ticket to the upcoming boxing match, a giant crowd shows up for the boxing match, the crowd gets rowdy and ignores the refs, and then the refs shrug and the boxing match starts.
I think that's roughly what I'm getting at. Democrats couch it in moral language, but as you well note, it's extremely difficult to see how Trump (especially earlier Trump) was morally worse that Iraq War era George W. Bush. But it is easy to see that Democrats really liked the social, cultural terms of debate they had against the Mitt Romneys of the world, and they really don't like the terms of debate they have against Trump.
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