Now that we know that there never was any Trump Russia collusion, and now that we know that the Democrats aren’t going to let that hinder their lust for impeachment, the question in all minds is whether the Democrats have a Bismarck cunning strategy or a Baldrick cunning plan to extinguish the Trump menace.

For instance, Andrew C. McCarthy writes of an “exquisitely planned political campaign.” Really? It could just as easily be a Keystone Kops routine, starting with Hillary campaign operatives coopting the “intelligence community” during the campaign and then getting Obama on board because he’d want to avoid the embarrassment of being involved in the private e-mail system stupidity.

What would you have done as president the first time you heard about the Hillary e-mail system? I’d say any president with half a brain would demand that either the e-mail system or Hillary is outta here by sundown. But Obama is weak, feeble.

And what about the nonconcession of the 2016 election? I’d say that on election night, Hillary was drunk, and in no fit state to make a concession speech. And then on the following day, she was hungover. People don’t make very good decisions when they are drunk and/or hungover.

And then the Mueller investigation. I thought that Rule One for a lawyer is: you never ask a question in court unless you already know the answer. So, you gin up a two-year witch-hunt without knowing whether the witches did it?

Impeachment? The Nixon impeachment worked because the 70s was still the era of gentlemanly Republicans who believed in the basic goodwill of the other side. Not now. Not after the Democrats pushed back on the Clinton impeachment. Not now that Trump has buried the gentlemanly Republican right next to the grave of William F. Buckley, Jr.

Let’s try to understand the political moment from another direction. Let’s assume that the left’s grand strategy, of riling up the poor to demand loot from the middle class, is reaching its sell-by date. Obviously, when the vast majority of voters are poor, then a program for the poor is a political winner. Indeed, the real genius of the welfare state was to help the poor by dealing in the middle class, as in government education, Social Security and unemployment insurance. Everybody wins!

It’s not surprising that, as the poor and the working class moved upwards to modest prosperity, the left would need to modify its successful strategy. And it did, by searching for new victims to represent.

But there’s a problem. The programs to help the new victims did not deal in the middle class. Indeed, they were paid for by the middle class. Affirmative Action was paid for by the white workers who didn’t get those firefighter jobs; diversity and inclusion are paid for by white males who are guilty until proven innocent. At some point, people start to notice.

But advocating for the latest victim is the only politics the left knows: thus LGBT and Muslim and illegal alien advocacy. Big comprehensive programs are the only government that the left knows; thus Hillarycare and Obamacare and Medicare For All and the Green New Deal.

We can expect the left to go on doing what it knows best until it disappears into political oblivion.

Suppose that your party had controlled Congress, man and boy, for about 60 years, from 1930 to 1990, and then the music changed and Congress became pretty well balanced, shifting from one party to the other. You’d be pretty upset.

Suppose that your guys ran the administrative state for about 100 years, and then a populist candidate with no political experience walked in and took the presidency. You’d be beside yourself.

Suppose that you had cowed the white majority for 50 years using the bald-faced lie that anyone that spoke a word against your racial quota system was a racist. And suppose that the ordinary white racist decided that, hey, I voted for the First Black President and now I’m done. What would the racist liberal robin do then, poor thing?

Suppose you believe, as I do, that all political and cultural identity is “fake tribalism,” meaning that people identify themselves as American or educated or black or white or LGBT or “woke” or globalist or any other tribe according to how they were carefully taught to hate and to fear -- by the teachers or the Mean Girls or the homeboys.

Then it could be that the Democrats, whether Bismarcks or Baldricks, are finding out right now that

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

Particularly if your philosophy worships the idols of identity politics.

Look, I’m no genius. All I know is that the times they are a-changin’.

And nothing is set in stone.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.