There are too many data points and no longer reasons to give the benefit of the doubt to Senate Dems – or really any public officials – living in Universe A. Time to move on.

But the project before us now is BROADER than those battles. The goal is to fend off authoritarianism! For our elected leaders to take a moment to get their bearings after the election was frustrating. But to operate this way now – after ICE raids, political prosecutions, etc. – is just absurd.

The longtime public servant (and institutionalist) in me was sympathetic to these arguments for about 2 seconds. People outside government often can’t see the hours, days, sometimes years of invisible work to get good, new ideas through the creaky, narrow, brittle piping of old bureaucracies.

There was an instinct among some pundits to cast the anger over that concession as unreasonable. Barro mocked frustrated liberals (it’s not the Schumer's job “to satisfy your emotional needs"). Yglesias said Schumer’s detractors were “engaging in cheap position taking” without a real alternative.

Then, in March, Schumer allowed a stopgap funding bill to advance to the floor, essentially handing Trump the funds to continue dismantling the government. The dam broke, and with it came a monumental flood of anger from party activists and House Dems – some of whom had taken risks to oppose Trump.

This strange dissonance seeped into the early days of the new presidency, as the party elite continued to describe Trump’s threats in dramatic prose while using few new tactics outside the box set of Universe A political tactics (press conferences, committee hearings, the occasional protest).

In the months before the election, Democrats sounded every alarm that a Trump victory would plunge the country into Universe B. But November came and went, and within a few weeks , the same party faithful descended upon Washington for annual holiday receptions. Universe A.

Universe B said: this was not even close to normal. Trump would do everything he promised, and more. His North Star would not be a more conservative democracy, but Budapest on the Potomac – a society that performs the rituals of democracy but only after stripping them of any real meaning.

Universe A said: This moment, strange as it feels, still sits within the normal bounds of U.S. political history. Sure, the characters are more eccentric. The courts may create a glide-path for conservative victories. But we've endured worse and our democratic institutions can withstand the strain.

Around anxious family dinners, at organizing retreats, on podcasts and radio shows, and in all the places where people deliberate, half of America, finding itself now in the opposition, debated this question.

Either this moment in US history was more or less normal, or it wasn't. Where one came down on this question would bear on what they felt should happen next, and what – in a society wishing to remain democratic – would be required of us.

Let's call these two orientations Universe A and Universe B.