Here’s the thing: if being convicted of 34 felonies, accused of rape, and trying to overthrow the government isn’t going to sway undecideds, something has gone wrong with voter communication in a way that can’t be overcome by carefully tacking center.

We’re living through a full-bore five-alarm catastrophic meltdown of the system of norms and values that seemed to guide US politics, and in the middle of it is this class of elite political pros who are convinced they tinker with policy positioning and fix things.

It’s like being in a car that’s careening off a cliff, the entire engine block roaring in flames, total loss of steering control, and lecturing the driver: “Hey man you gotta feather the brake a little.” HELLO, THAT’S PRETTY CLEARLY NOT THE PROBLEM.

Now I think if you step back and look at that collapsed systems of norms and values, it’s actually not that hard to see what’s going on.

All the institutions that ordinarily enforce the norms have endlessly passed the buck to each other, waiting for some magic cosmic force to come boot Trump out of contention as he passed one red line after another. They figured it would just happen automatically; it doesn’t.

At some point institutions needed to start declaring Trump, his ideas, and his actions disqualifying. No one quite did, really: not the press, which reduced itself to bloodless neutrality, not the law, which caved endlessly, not his opponents, who didn’t want to lead that charge.

Even now you see Trump pushing ideas like his insane proposal to slice American population by nearly 8% and crash our economy - a genocidal ethnic cleansing proposal - and everyone just kind of talking around it, hoping it’ll take care of itself.

Everyone is still nervously looking around to each other, hoping that someone will prevent them from having to step up and simply stand up for the ideas and norms this country is supposedly built on.

Our public forums are flooded with vile and bloodthirsty lunatics following in Trump’s wake, the kind of people who, even two or three years ago, would be movie villains. Everyone is afraid to comment, much less do what needs to be done and expunge them.

We need a restored commitment to the idea that lunacy, villainy, bigotry, and corruption are unacceptable in government and politics. That creeps and racists have no place in the US public sphere. That lifelong liars and frauds are unacceptable regardless of party.

And frankly, the hardcore MAGA contingent - the feral fascist sociopaths, totally devoid any kind of recognizable American values - need to be treated as fully unwelcome in US society. Their ideas are going to destroy this country if we don’t throw them out.