What we are witnessing in Washington DC this week is a concerted effort — by the establishments of both parties — to remove Donald Trump from the map of politics in the United States, to delegitimize everything done by the Trump Administration over four years as justification for a rollback, to validate all the claims made against him by his opponents in both parties, and to brand his supporters as undemocratic and anti-American in order to fracture the non-traditional coalition of interests he brought together.

This is an effort — by the establishments of both parties — to render Trump and his coalition ineffective as a political movement by making it radioactive to any conservative politician who might try to harness it in pursuing a similar policy agenda in the future. //

Setting aside all claims of fraud — which the Trump campaign has never demonstrated with substantive evidence in a proper forum — the combination of obvious and not-so-obvious efforts by the party establishments to prevent a second Trump term cannot be erased. It will continue to animate the coalition that Trump assembled, and it will continue to give support to the policy issues he pushed to the front of the debate.

That is what both Establishments now fear. Their hegemony over the national political discourse was disrupted by Donald Trump’s Presidency and calls into doubt their ability to maintain themselves as the drivers of the debate, with the issues framed by their interests. //

The issues that animated that coalition are not going away. Hence the need to stigmatize the coalition itself.