For Democrats, the Capitol assault was the gift that keeps on giving

As events recede, they change. When Donald Trump’s unhinged endgame culminated in a popular assault on the Capitol, most Americans of all political persuasions watched the improbable broadcast with genuine horror. Hell, yes, I was horrified myself. But as this month has advanced, and fears about my country disintegrating into anarchy have so far proved mercifully misplaced, lefty American commentators have progressed from anguish to glee.

The New York Times banners that assault on its pages pretty much every day. The still of scruffs in red hats climbing the facade of the Capitol is now a standard backdrop on CNN. It must be thrilling to have your opponents do so much heavy lifting for your own team. For Democrats and the whole left-wing establishment now smugly back in charge of absolutely everything in the United States — the media, academia, publishing, the entire federal government, most of the courts bar the Supreme one, which can now be packed, of course — the shabby hoi polloi who smashed their way into this vaunted sacred space are the gift that keeps on giving.

As if having to take responsibility for the Trump presidency weren’t bad enough, the rampage gave the Republican party an additional PR black eye whose branching purple blotches won’t fade for years. The spectacle has proved so politically ruinous that some have seriously proposed that those ruffians were really special-ops Democratic apparatchiks in fancy dress.

Left-wing politicians and pundits alike have now designated the extremists who invaded the Capitol as brand ambassadors for the half of the US electorate who identify as conservative. So conservatives wave Confederate flags. They’re vandals, thieves and cop killers with no respect for the very institutions to which they profess fealty.