Who gave us President Trump? Largely the people who complain most about him and seem most disturbed by his rise.

President Barack Obama helped give us Trump when he failed to tend to and build up his party. Sworn in with healthy majorities in both houses of Congress, he sacrificed them over four successive elections to his policy obsessions, especially healthcare, which played a massive role in both 2010 and 2014. The rout two years later, when he was not on the ballot, completed the damage. No, Obama never lost an election, but he did so much damage to his own party that he left it at its lowest ebb in a great many years.