Something has gone fantastically wrong with the American system of governance. It is partly that the Democrats have gone not just full socialist but have pivoted anti-West. It is also that the media has been corrupted by this far left message which only allows a filtered version of events to enter the national conversation. This is a column from The Wall Street Journal: America at Obama’s End. I don’t think it comes anywhere near the assessment it needs to make, although there is some soul searching going on somewhere.

We are near the end of the seventh year of Barack Obama’s presidency, and by any measure the United States is a fractured nation. Its people are more divided politically than any time in recent memory. Personally, many are anxious, angry or just down.

Whatever Mr. Obama promised in that famous first Inaugural Address, any sense of a nation united and raised up is gone. This isn’t normal second-term blues. It’s a sense of bust.

The formal measure of all this appeared last week with the release of the Pew Research poll, whose headline message is that trust in government is kaput. Forget the old joke about the government coming to “help.” There’s a darker version now: We’re the government, and we’re here to screw you.

But it’s not just Obama since Merkel in Germany seems to have the same ethos, as do others. But the American contagion is the worst and will require a very fresh and different start to overcome the eight years of Obama-led havoc that will not be easily reversed. Yet what may be the sourest note of all in this article is how it ends:

Mr. Obama has repeatedly mocked institutions he didn’t control and abused the powers of those he did. Almost always, the ridicule and condescension came in front of cheering audiences. It’s hardly a surprise that Donald Trump is exploiting and expanding the loss of public faith. Mr. Obama spent seven years softening up Mr. Trump’s audiences for him.

We may get a third Obama term after all.

It turns out not even to be about the president at all, but to warn Americans not to vote for Donald Trump as if it would be the same as four more years of Obama.

[Via Instapundit]