Let’s put aside the question of decorum and how we get back to a place where political debate is constructive and Congress is a realm of problem solving and progress, not a modern-day Colosseum in which gladiators do grisly battle.

Let’s focus instead on tactics. Does public shaming serve the cause of thwarting Trump and limiting his considerable damage to America? The answer is more likely no than yes, and I don’t think that we can take that risk when a man is this miserable and the stakes are this high.

Public shaming competes with the very developments that illuminate those stakes. The Supreme Court just validated Trump’s Muslim — er, travel — ban. Harley-Davidson announced that it’s moving production and jobs outside of America. There are constant fresh revelations about the ethical squalor of members of Trump’s cabinet. Let’s direct voters toward the red meat of their wrongdoing, not their indigestion when they go out for a chimichanga.

It’s possible that public shaming will have no effect on voters’ feelings and decisions, which are largely baked in by now. But it’s also possible that public shaming intensifies an ambient ugliness that sours more Trump skeptics than Trump adherents, who clearly made peace with ugliness a while back. And those adherents, nursing a ludicrous sense of persecution, could turn out in greater numbers this November as a result.

It’s also the case that Trump can’t win on facts, which is why he has no regard for them, or on policy, which is why he’s cavalier about it. But resentment? Fury? That’s the toxic ecosystem in which he thrives. He’d like to turn all the country into a Trump rally. If the noise is loud enough, no signal can be heard.

Trump’s opponents say that it’s not fair that their confrontational conduct draws censure when his own conduct is more confrontational — and is heartless and racist to boot. They’re right. It’s not fair.

But you know what’s less fair? This presidency itself. And you know what would be even less fair than that? Trump’s getting another two years with an obsequious Republican majority in Congress and, heaven help us, a second term. The stain on America could be indelible. Preventing it takes precedence over all else.