It is one of the ironies of our time. Electronic media have allowed people to immerse themselves more deeply than ever before in the details of Washington’s daily politics. Yet this same closeness to the realities of politics somehow makes many more antipolitical than ever. They’d rather rage at how someone else is always selling them out than do the pedestrian work of assembling the unavoidable coalitions that make political victories possible…

This antipolitical insistence is the mirror image of those on the right who wanted a forced vote to shut down the government, no matter that they controlled neither the presidency nor the Senate.

In the ever-escalating political psychodramas of our time, people are more convinced than ever of the correctness of their politics, and they want all of it put in place, now. But one of the enduring virtues of America’s system of democracy is that when the day comes to choose a president and a Congress, these same people have to decide whether to vote only their beliefs or vote for getting political power. Most still choose the latter. But that could be changing, most likely to the detriment of GOP hopes.