This also results in people thinking Obama is a good president and electing characters like Donald Trump. Not everyone has time to educate themselves about something that will provide very little personal return (rational ignorance), but it would be great if people at least put in more initial research to find their initial "intellectual champion," and then trusted them from there, with perhaps an annual update to make sure your values still align. Then you might come up with someone like Glenn Greenwald, instead. Granted, Obama sounded a lot more promising in 2008.