Today's Hofstadter

Richard Hofstadter wrote the seminal essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics."

Jon Chait updates it to be the "Imbecile Style in American Politics."

People have asked what we really learned from the Wolff book?  Why do we care that Jake Tapper cut off Stephen Miller's mic?  These are people who have already assimilated the evidence that Trump is a profoundly limited intellect dealing with cognitive decline and a personality riddled with psychological pathologies.

And, yes, for many of the "Deplorables" that is precisely the point.

There are a bunch of mushy centrists, suburban, civic minded political neophytes.  These people check in and out of politics as the time progresses.  They desperately want to believe that Trump isn't everything that he is.  That would clash with their conception of their country.  They have to have their noses rubbed in Trump's manifest shortcomings.

No, it won't make a difference for the people who are cheering on a Senate run by Joe Arpaio.  Who cares?  It should make a difference on the college educated suburban voter outside Phoenix.

And that is where the Blue Wave should come from.