The best way to think of the Lincoln Project is a political arbitrage created by Dem leadership’s habit of responding to Trump with a braindead, mechanical focus on low-wattage kitchen table issues. Eventually someone came along and stole the opportunity they refuse to exploit.

Most of the country is despairing, terrified, or brimming over with anger at the president, in all his obvious corruption and incompetence. Dems have somehow convinced themselves into that leaning into this sentiment would be foolish. So a bunch of GOPers did it instead.

Just as a general rule, the unwillingness of Dem leadership to react directly and commensurately to Trump’s historic abuses is a sort of missing link that helps explain a lot of otherwise-bizarre political phenomena right now.

Democracy is meant to be an antagonistic process. Groups are kept in line when their opponents attack their failings. But Dem leadership too often wants to have their cake and eat it too: they want to soberly float above the fray, and yet still reap votes from Trump’s failures.

It’s worked some, because Trump is so historically awful that even with Democrats mostly absent from the field he’s still toxic. But the absence of a consistently noisy opposition has also destabilized the whole political system in a lot of ways, probably with long-term harms.