By their lights, Democrats did nothing wrong either in 2001, when, terrified that a Hispanic conservative might be put in line for a Supreme Court nomination they filibustered the nomination of Miguel Estrada for an entire two years, during which his health and work suffered, and at the end of which his wife would miscarry and die. No words of regret for the party of women, even from one for which “reproductive healthcare” had become an obsession, except when it threatened a court nomination, during which no holds whatsoever were barred.

Nor could they acknowledge that Barack Obama did anything to smash civic norms in 2010, when, after Scott Brown’s election deprived him of his 60th vote for the passage of health care, he rammed it through anyhow using parliamentary technicalities, breaking the norm that large, complex measures should be passed by a large and bipartisan margins and backed up by popular will.