You don’t win an argument by getting personal

‘If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant,’ Democratic Representative Maxine Waters railed to a California rally last month, ‘in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome any more, anywhere.’

So this is the way Americans do politics these days. It’s roll-up-the-sleeves down-and-dirty, and it’s personal.

Democratic activists have indeed harassed, hounded and heckled members of the Trump administration during their downtime at movie theatres, restaurants, and their own homes. Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was ejected from a Lexington, Virginia restaurant because of the perceived toxicity of her politics. (It would have been illegal to refuse service to Sanders for being gay, black or disabled, but no American law forbids discrimination against Republicans.) Hence a national discussion about whether ‘civility’ should still play any part in a country that’s lost the plot in every other respect.