The midterm election Tuesday is not a primarily a choice between conservatives and liberals or their policies. It would be, in the words of Ernest Hemingway, “pretty to think so,” but it is not true.

Yes, there are some important issues pending as we head into the 116th Congress: health care, an idiotic trade war, an arms control treaty. Yet they pale in comparison to what should be the overriding concern of every American citizen of any party or affiliation: the preservation and protection of our constitutional system of government.

This is a serious claim. How much damage, really, can any one member of Congress, or any state or local official, make to our way of life?

As it turns out, plenty, if they choose to run under the banner of a party that is now little more than the vehicle of an ignorant and rage-addicted cult of personality. The 2018 midterms are, more than anything else, a referendum on the corrosive changes in our political life wrought by the current president of the United States. Donald Trump himself has said so. “I’m not on the ticket,” he said last month, “but I am on the ticket, because this is also a referendum about me.”