http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/opinion/sunday/liberalisms-big-bet.html?ref=opinionLiberalism’s Big Bet
Ross Douthat JULY 30, 2016
THE key pivot point in the Democratic convention arrived during President Obama’s speech on Wednesday, when he told the throng of Democrats that Donald Trump’s baleful convention rhetoric “wasn’t particularly Republican — and it sure wasn’t conservative.”
With that olive branch to anti-Trump Republicans, he shifted his party’s convention from the mission of its first two days (shoring up the base, mollifying Berners) to the mission of its grand finale: the appropriation of conservative tropes and themes — God and country, the flag and 9/11, the founding fathers and the Constitution — in the service of symbolic outreach to Republicans and right-leaning independents.
more
