It's clear more than ever that Trump himself is just an avatar for the Trump voter. I think we've distilled this down over the last four years to "They're afraid of a mean tweet," which they are, but it's more than that, they're afraid of the mob that gets motivated and it can be motivated through a mean tweet or something else now that Trump is off of Twitter and has no real effective way to reach out to his masses in the same way.
This is why Republicans won't be able to censure Marjorie Taylor Greene, just a single freshman congressman from a rural district, for harrassing a victim of a school shooting and shouting that he's a crisis actor, or for trying to plan the assassination of other members of congress. Republicans are going to hem and haw about this like they did with Trump... Not because theyr'e afraid of MTG anymore, but they're afraid of and usually side with their base. They know their future in office requires this mob of crazies that probably make up .... maybe only 10% of their actual electorate, but are capable of motivating 20-30% of it.
The shit with Mitch was pretty predictable. When he was said to support impeachment, I absolutely believed (And still do) that it was misreported or misunderstood. That Trump signalling to members of the House that he supported impeachment wasn't an indication that he would vote to convict Trump in the Senate, but that he just supported the House impeachment of Trump, he supported them doing that even though he would ultimately exonerate Trump or not be able to amass a bloc against him in the senate. McConnell's vote will show us how much of a spine he has to stand up to his own mob, which I suspect is not very much. I expect he'll balk and join his GOP base in the senate, call it a witchhunt or an overreach of power, use it to hold up Biden's legislative agenda, and make the narrative that "Democrats don't want to lead for the American people, they're obssessed with Trump who isn't even in office anymore."
