Bad Mental Picture!

Shakespeare wrote that misery makes for strange bedfellows, and you could say the same about a shared antipathy for Donald Trump. Certainly, ten years ago I wouldn’t have imagined myself sharing a bunk with Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin or former Republican strategist Rick Wilson, but that was then, and this is now.

Now, as it turns out, these never Trumpers and I share something in common: the wish to see the US remain a representative democracy rather than devolving into a Putin-like kleptocracy run by a former WWE promoter and reality TV snake oil salesman whose mendacity makes Pinocchio look like Marcus Aurelias in comparison.

The much-heralded midterm tsunami has ended up looking like, in the words of Twitter wit Serenity Now, “some mid-cycle spotting,” so Rick Wilson is “staring down into the Valley of Schadenfreude, overlooking the beautiful Lake of MAGA Tears and inhaling the sweet smoke of incinerated personal and corporate billions of dollars that went to dead-enders better suited for an asylum than office.”

Now that’s what I call some postgame trash talking.

Of course, we’re not out of the Disenchanted Forest yet. Trump will probably announce his candidacy Tuesday, Joe Biden is about as popular as a DMV, and voter suppression is a real danger.

Nevertheless, things could have been a whole hell of a lot worse, so fa la la la live for today.

Rick Wilson