"Liberals thought that the best way to stop Trump was to treat him not as a normal, if obnoxious, political figure with bad policy ideas but as a mortal threat to democracy itself. Whether or not he is such a threat, this style of opposition led Democrats astray. It goaded them into their own form of antidemocratic politics — using the courts to try to get Trump’s name struck from the ballot in Colorado or trying to put him in prison on hard-to-follow charges. It distracted them from the task of developing and articulating superior policy responses to the valid public concerns he was addressing. And it made liberals seem hyperbolic, if not hysterical, particularly since the country had already survived one Trump presidency more or less intact.

"Today, the Democrats have become the party of priggishness, pontification and pomposity. It may make them feel righteous, but how’s that ever going to be a winning electoral look?" -- NYT, November 6, 2024

I respond: It will always be the right look for bitter, self-righteous
functionaries who want a tyrannical system which will degrade and ruin Republican enemies who have real integrity. It will always the right look for voters who want to dismantle the Constitution and bully those who don't go along with what's politically correct. The winning electoral "look" today is not a look or a brand but a platform of real policies for freedom which can be articulated and applied in the real world by courageous and principled statesmen working together to keep their promises and rebuild the broken civilization.