Writing at the Washington Post, Michael Gerson has joined some of his other colleagues in arguing that even conservative voters should punish the GOP by voting Democratic in House races, no matter the character or quality of the Republican candidate. He justifies the argument by declaring that “American politics is in the midst of an emergency.”

I’ve written about this before, but short-term emergency thinking (let’s call it “Flight 93ism”) is one the reasons why politics is so dysfunctional. It’s one of the reasons why Donald Trump gained the GOP nomination and one of the reasons why he is president today. Voters have fully imbibed the idea that they must swallow their objections and vote for deeply flawed candidates for the sake of advancing urgent larger goals. American politics wasn’t in a do-or-die crisis in 2016. And Donald Trump hasn’t created that kind of emergency in 2018.