Jefferson was thought to be safe because the demographic and political makeup of his district supposedly made it impossible for a black Democrat to lose. Voters were not imagined to be able to step out of their little identity politics heads long enough to actually vote him out.

But all over the map, we’ve been seeing genuinely awful congresspeople thrown out of office when voters, even voters they are purportedly perpetually safe with/from, kick them to the curb. Stevens in Alaska (longest serving Republican in history, been in the Senate longer than most Alaskans have been alive), Musgrave in Colorado, the Ryun-Boyda-Jenkins progression in my hometown district of KS-2, both party’s primaries where, by and large, the cw-anointed frontrunners couldn’t compete, voters weren’t going to be told who to vote for, and so they sifted through and found their best candidates.

It’s a dirty little secret of American democracy that sometimes it actually works pretty well.

Sure, power corrupts and some democrats will succumb. But in my experience the public tends not to punish pols for corruption unless there’s a smoking gun, like 90k under the ice cube tray or a videotape of someone taking an envelope of cash and stuffing it in their bra, that sort of thing.

Until you get caught red-handed, you’re just a lovable scoundrel.