Populism can be viewed, fundamentally, as a protest vote. Things are bad, I want change, I don't care what it is. Trump is a populist; he did not win the states he won because of what he is but because of what he isn't. Drain the swamp. Make America Great Again.

A populist who wishes to be an incumbent must deliver bread and circuses. Build the wall. End Chain Migration. He need not make the country better, but he must give the protesters at least some of what he promised. If he promises to erect a 40-foot statue of a penis on the capitol steps, there'd best be a phallus come election day.

The calculus at play is whether or not the populace is happy, and whether or not the populist's coat tails are worth riding. From a cynical standpoint, if you can make a fraction of the MAGA-heads who were all about Trump be less all about Trump, you win. And if you can make the opportunistic quislings that have enabled Trump re-evaluate their costs-benefits analysis, you win.

Someone on Twitter longed for the days when all those who had enabled Trump over the past few years realize that they didn't advance their careers, they didn't constrain his impulses, they just provided cover fire for things to get worse and worse while everything Trump touches dies.

That's the Republican calculus, anyway. The Democratic calculus is to salve their base by doing the minimum common decent thing. Democrats in congress told Obama that Obamacare was the kind of thing they could lose their jobs over. Obama told them Obamacare was the kind of thing worth losing their jobs over. One party is clearly unprincipled. That makes it easy for the other party to follow suit. But if you wish to retain any of the donors, you have to do your job from time to time.