There is plenty of blame to go around, some of it blue, for the Trumpist world that rising young politicians like Britt are inheriting. (She faces futile Democratic opposition in November.) But often, in our obsession with the personal malignancy of Donald Trump, we tend to give a pass to those institutional players who might have contained him before his pathologies became civically systemic.
Republicans in the Senate like Shelby (a former Democrat), Charles Grassley, Roy Blunt and on down the roster to especially Mitch McConnell were the adults who knew better, aloof from the cult of crazy. Yet when called to fulfill their oath to the Constitution in not one but two impeachment trials, they did nothing, even though taking a stand would ultimately have cost them little — not that their oath includes any such opt-out.
How must these statesmen feel now that the Ukrainian head of state they refused to punish Trump for kneecapping has become the Winston Churchill of our time?
In their stoic grandeur, the panel’s proceedings seem directed at a single goal: holding Trump accountable for his high crimes. In our continuing need to understand how the United States of America could have made such a man president, the still-democratic majority keeps hoping that if we present one more piece of proof, if his own people testify against him, then his supporters will come to their senses and the union can survive.