Come on now. I'm not arguing that the political rhetoric on both sides isn't awful and unproductive at times. Of course it is (although, as I said to somebody else here, it's horrifying that people are willing to make decisions about who should be the next leader of the free world based on mean comments on FB). I've pointed out several times how dishonest some of the criticism of Trump is. I find it especially infuriating precisely because it makes it easier for Trump to call all criticism "fake news."

But this is just the falsest of false equivalences.

You cannot name a single person in the Democratic Party who "acts just like Trump." Trump's central appeal, especially to his most zealous fans, is how far from the political and democratic norms he is.

I don't think there's a single Democrat who would have sat by for eight hours as their supporters attacked the Capitol. There hasn't been a single Democrat president who refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power or lied for four years about having an election "stolen" from him. There hasn't been a single Democrat who called up a secretary of state and pressured him to "find him some votes." There hasn't been a single Democrat who praised Vladimir Putin while undermining his own intelligence agencies or who mocked a disabled reporter or even just who refused to release their tax returns.

Of course, almost all Republicans have been able to meet these fairly low bars too. And lots of Democrats have fallen at other hurdles. But the brand of political exhaustion that just puts all of this in a "neither side is perfect" barrel and equates them is a serious problem.