If you think it’s ridiculous to suggest that Avenatti could run for president and win, I wonder just where you’ve been hiding yourself these past three years. Just a few weeks ago, he showed up at a summer meeting of the Democratic Party in Chicago and was greeted enthusiastically, with numerous attendees referring to him as “Hottie Avenatti.” (“I wouldn’t not f–k him,” said another.) I’m not saying it’s likely. But what exactly is it that would stand in his way? What norms? What standards? What guardrails would protect us from Stormy Daniels’ lawyer leapfrogging over the heads of the two dozen standard-issue Democrats who’ll be clamoring for the honor of going up against President Trump in 2020?

The answer, dear reader, is none. There are no norms, standards, or guardrails to speak of anymore. Not even on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where some of those standard-issue Democrats spent last week saying and doing anything they could, no matter how nonsensical, to convince angry members of their party that they really, really, really don’t like Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s very mainstream-conservative nominee to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. It was an impressive show, but as with so much else in our public life these days, it was only a show, since everybody in the room was well aware that the Democrats can do nothing to stand in the way of confirming Kavanaugh. So we were left with a pantomime of genuine, effective opposition.