The Democrats are positioning themselves as the patrons of ordinary Americans. Meanwhile, the Republicans are positioning themselves on the crackpot fringe – except it’s not the fringe. It’s the Republican base that has lost its sense of reality, and the base that the party is playing to. The Republicans can galvanize the base and recover both houses of Congress in the midterms but they’ll lose in 2024 for the same reason. This is not a smart electoral strategy. Nor is blocking an independent commission into the assault on the Capitol on January 6, as Senate Republicans did in late May. The base will forget that a Republican president and Republican representatives egged on a mob, but moderates and swing voters won’t. And the reddest of red caps will insist that the mob were driven by claims that last November’s election was stolen. Not bungled, as government agencies bungled the protection of the Capitol in what a Senate report calls a series of ‘critical breakdowns’ in security. Not mismanaged or corrupted, as electoral processes tend to be everywhere, and especially in big cities. But stolen, in an organized and elaborate conspiracy to overthrow American democracy. Yes, the Paranoid Style has always been part of the American way. Yes, the Democrats also have their crazies and cover for them too. And yes, the Democrats also encourage mass delusion for electoral gain. But there are two important differences between the Democrats’ fantastical obsession with Russian meddling in 2016 and the Republican base’s fantastical obsessions today.