MATTHEW CONTINETTI: The delusional Democrats of 2017.

The election of Donald Trump has brought unified Republican government to Washington and overturned our understanding of how politics works. Or at least it should have done so. The Democrats seem not to understand how to deal with Trump and the massive change he is about to bring to the nation’s capital. During the general election they fell for the idea that Trump can be defeated by conventional means, spending hundreds of millions of dollars in negative television advertising and relying on political consultants beholden to whatever line Politico was selling on a given day. This strategy failed Trump’s Republican primary opponents, but Democrats figured that was simply because the GOP was filled with deplorables. It was a rationalization that would cost them.

Republicans control the House, the Senate, 34 governor’s mansions, and 4,100 seats in state legislatures. But Democrats act like they run Washington.

To be fair, Democrats do still run the media which reports on Washington, which, and for good reason, they’ve long treated as no different from running Washington itself.

What they still fail to understand, even after November 8, is the power of a Republican who has figured out how to end-run the media.