It's only January; how savage and vulgar are Democrats going to get by this fall?

If we look at Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kierstjen Nielsen's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee today as the opening salvo in the political squaring off that will culminate in the November midterm election, we ought to brace ourselves for a bloodbath that not even 2016, let alone any earlier precedent, can give us a frame of reference for.

She held her own well, even as Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin trotted out a degree of smugness and laser focus on impugning her very position as an administration figure that was hurl-worthy. The irony that they are subjecting the DHS secretary to this should not be lost on us. Their antics were detrimental to US security:

The Democrats’ self-righteousness is disgusting. Apart from that, I find it hard to understand their strategy. (Paul has struggled to make sense of it, as well.) They have gone public with characterizations of a private negotiating session they had with the president, some of which are probably false. In doing so, they have hurt America’s standing in some countries. Their actions are deeply unpatriotic, and I cannot recall any precedent for them. 

Why are they doing it, other than the fact that they are blinded by their hate for the president? Like Paul, I question whether they can plausibly believe that double-crossing the president strengthens their hand in the negotiations over various immigration-related issues.

But it was Cory Booker who took things over the top:

He also found her remarks that she could not recall the president using that phrase in negotiations with Democrats and Republicans on immigration as unacceptable; Nielsen was in room. In fact, he said she was complicit in nurturing racism.  

“Your silence and amnesia is complicity,” barked Booker. 

He reminded the DHS secretary that blacks, Muslims, and other communities of color are living in abject terror since Trump was elected president, and that fact that she doesn’t feel that pain infuriates him (via NTK Network): 

When Dick Durbin called me, I had tears of rage when I heard about his experience in that meeting,” he added, referencing the president’s comments about third-world countries. “And for you not to feel that hurt and that pain and to dismiss some of the questions of my colleagues, saying, ‘I’ve already answered that line of questions,’ when tens of millions of Americans are hurting right now because of what they’re worried about what happened in the White House, that’s unacceptable to me.” 

As I said the other day, Trump is culpable to the degree that his clumsy way of articulating anything and everything, the absence of a filter on what comes out of his mouth, made possible these vulgar displays in today's hearing.

And this cycle, established over the course of the last year, is going to repeat itself, and everybody involved is going to look more ridiculous, and post-America's adversaries and enemies, as noted above, are going to say among themselves, "Can you believe the kind of clowns running the US these days?"