The end of the beginning

The Kavanaugh confirmation is the high water mark of the conservative resurgence in America that began nearly ten years ago, when Barack Obama was elected president and the Democrats began steadily losing legislative seats across the country, first at the state level (1,000-plus and counting) and then nationally. Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), whose primary symptom before violent tantrums is denial of reality, led the Democrats to engage in tactics against Judge Kavanaugh that might have been surefire winners prior to the Trump era, however unprecedented they might be in their degree of viciousness and disregard for over a thousand years' tradition of civil justice. It is difficult to overstate the stakes. If the Democrats had won, Trump might not be able to get a single qualified Supreme Court justice confirmed from here to 2025, no matter how many vacancies opened up.

But as any open-eyed person not suffering from TDS will tell you, it is futile to party like it's 1996, or 2008,or even 2015. Trump has carpet-bombed the old rules of the game (that is, that Republicans always capitulate) out of existence. The Democrats' gambit failed (albeit by a cliffhanger-thin margin), and now the wages of its risk are fully exposed. It's hard to see how they could possibly block Trump's next Kavanaugh, and the one after that. Go lower? Be more vicious? Pre-emptively plant media stories of preschool perversions and Ku Klux Klan membership about every judge on Trump's Top 100 list? Prophylactically assassinate them all? In their TDS blindness, they missed the opportunity of one of their most effective strategies: divide and conquer. The Achilles heel of the conservative resurgence was the NeverTrump community, all of the comfortable, well fed, and well connected elitists of the right for whom Trump's departure from the presumed standards of morality and decorum trumped (sorry) all other considerations, including any and all actual concrete accomplishments. 4.2% economic growth.

3.5 million-plus new jobs.

Lowest unemployment in 40 years, with the greatest benefits accruing to blacks, Hispanics, women, and youths.

Rising wages.

Tax rates cut, regulations rolled back, investment rolling in.

Embassy moved to Israel's capital.

Friends renegotiating trade agreements; adversaries paying respectful attention. North Korea at the table. And: Kavanaugh confirmed. All of the above had not been enough to bring the NeverTrumps on board. But the Democrats' disgraceful behavior accomplished what no one on the right had been able to, and now the right, from the lettered elite to the blue-collar Tea Partiers and from sea to shining sea, are united as we have not been in 50 years. Thank you, DiFi! The left is not conceding defeat, but doubling down, vandalizing buildings where Republicans congregate, banning conservative voices on social media, disrupting traffic, threatening physical violence, and vowing not to restore civility until leftists are back in power. These are the behaviors not of winners, but of cornered rats. We are winning. The relevant question is, will we stay united, stay energized and motivated, and prosecute unto victory this war declared upon us by the radical left at least 50 years ago? We cannot afford to fall into the complacency that is the left's most cherished wish for us. This war is not over, any more than World War II was "over" when Hitler's Luftwaffe foundered over the U.K. in 1940. It was, in Churchill's words, only the end of the beginning.