As liberals go, Julie Roginsky on Fox News is better than most. She is usually reasonable, sometimes persuasive and always appealing – exactly what a right-leaning outlet ought to seek in a left-leaning personality.

This past week on “Outnumbered,” she was impressive during a segment on the House Democrats again selecting the hard-left Nancy Pelosi as their minority leader. The conservatives around her understandably emphasized Pelosi’s obvious distance from the median voter of an electorate that just chose Donald Trump for president. Instead of dismissing them, or mounting a defense of Pelosi and the caucus that selected her, Roginsky began with a frank admission that she was going to “eat crow,” and then expressed frustration that her party was still trying to fight a culture war in a country of people more interested in economic growth and national security concerns.

A couple of segments later, the panel turned to flag burning and what its consequences might or should be. One should note here that the sole reason this is a subject for national attention of late is a single tweet on the topic posted by President-elect Trump, suggesting that a year in jail or loss of citizenship might be appropriate for flag burners. The conservatives split on this question, some regarding the First Amendment as protecting the act, others approving of a penalty for it. Roginsky took another tack.

She asked why Trump would tweet about this, asserting that it is a “settled issue” that was answered, apparently once and for all time, in the 1980s.

This response is, among Democrats, far more common than her take on the tin ear act of retaining Pelosi in leadership. In fact, it follows something of a tradition on the left. Whenever that side secures a win, no matter how contentious or close-run the victory was, its apologists and their media chorus immediately assert that the outcome be cast in stone for perpetuity. Recall that the misnamed Affordable Care Act, the first large-scale entitlement program to ever be passed without broad bipartisan support and for which not a single Republican voted in either chamber of Congress, was asserted to be “settled law” even as multiple court cases calling that into question were working their way toward the Supreme Court. As a law, it was apparently quite unsettled, as it only passed constitutional review of that body by redefining the individual mandate as a tax, which its framers and proponents loudly and often insisted it manifestly was not.

But regardless of context, the assertion that anything whatsoever is ever really settled law is absurd, a fact that so-called liberals should appreciate. It was once settled law that women could not vote. It was once settled law that senators were chosen by state legislatures. Perhaps more to the point, it was for some time settled law that alcohol consumption was permissible, then that it was not, and then that it was again. Even the most exalted of our laws, the Constitution, has been amended 17 times, not counting the original 10 prior to ratification. Laws at all levels can be changed, which is right and proper: In fact, it is hard to imagine, in absence of that fact, what the concept of “self-government” might mean.

But that is not the real point one can glean from the facts above. The real point is this: As with many larger-than-life personalities, Donald Trump’s greatest strengths and weaknesses are flip sides of the same coin. It has long been commonplace to observe that he is incapable of letting any perceived slight go. That is indeed a political weakness. But it is also a very large part of why he won.

This quirk of his personality extends beyond his own nose. He refuses to let go slights perceived to the nation that he so obviously loves, as well. That is why he tweeted about flag burning. And despite the fact that any change in policy on that question is unlikely, the fact that it rankles Trump is appreciated by a nation weary of leaders who clearly regard America, especially the nearly all of it that is not coastal or urban, with indifference, condescension, or outright contempt. This appreciation of willingness to fight for every inch is augmented by frustration with other recent standard-bearers, who forbade their message shops to bring up the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, or described their own alleged conservatism as “severe.”

If the members of the House Democratic Caucus had begun to grasp any of this, their new minority leader would be Tim Ryan, the young, smart, appealing Ohioan whose district’s largest cities are Akron and Youngstown.

As a life-long Republican, I do not expect Democrats to take my advice – so I will not tell them to abandon the septuagenarians who lead them, move back to the center, and listen to the voices among them that counsel message development that resonates beyond their own echo chambers. Instead, I will suggest to America that until they do, keep them on their recent steady diet, apart from Barack Obama’s re-election, of disappointing election nights.