I wrote yesterday about how the tax bill clarified and simplified things. Gone now is any residual hope that the Republican Party will be the check on Trump. It was always a slender hope, given Republicans’ decades-long descent from honesty and self-respect. But when they allowed themselves to be arranged around Trump in the shape of a Cheshire cat grin after their joined-hands passage of a shockingly dishonest and regressive tax bill, they closed that avenue for good. The GOP is now Trump’s party, with no daylight between. Orange is the new red.

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The good news is that Trump’s power currently rests on this very narrow base. A narrow base that doesn’t represent the American people. A narrow base that is rapidly becoming as reviled as Trump. And one which is vulnerable now, right in the middle of Trump’s interminable term. The polls are picking up a wave election. It needs to be a tsunami. Alabama showed just how far into Trump territory that wave can reach. Was Roy Moore a uniquely bad candidate? Answer: In their cynical embrace of Trump, they are now ALL uniquely bad candidates.

No matter which specific avenue might best lead to stopping Trump, whether it is investigation of his collusion or his locker-room intrusion or his mental confusion, destroying his base of support in Congress is the tank to drive up that avenue. The Republicans have nationalized this off-year election. The results need to be nationalized, too.

The message of 2018 needs to be more than just anti-Trump, though. It needs to be pro-American majority. Most Americans have made it plain that they want affordable health coverage, and this seems like a simple enough message to spearhead a powerful election revolt. Both Trump and his party have made it plain enough that given the chance, they will throw people back on their own luck in health care, both in resources and diagnoses. Whether it’s shoring up existing health care or going all the way to “Medicare for all,” health care is a plenty solid and popular message to carry in 2018.

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But most of all, it is important to not just defeat Trump’s party in 2018, but to absolutely pound it under a tidal wave. The results need to be definitive and the mandate to be undeniable. If you want your country to look like something other than Trump’s face forever, then pile that wave up, then double and re-double it. Trump is a real and present danger. But the opportunity to take back your country is just as real and just as present.