Obama-era liberal optimism and despair both yielded political disengagement

Evidence

Obama’s eight years in office are best understood as the further entrenchment of existing trends from the early aughts: most notably, the poptimist embrace of mass culture and the veneration of entrepreneurs. If anything, the powerful symbolism of Obama’s presidency fostered great complacency among liberals. Many believed that the election of a Black president had forever repudiated racism and that their charismatic hero would fix everything. But then, as Republican obstructionism stalled Obama’s agenda, hope curdled into cynicism. Both optimism and despair resulted in a similar disinterest in political intervention, in many ways mirroring the collective embrace of the culture industry’s most brazenly commercial output. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 208