Politicos collectively asked themselves “what if we didn’t force our nazis and sex pests to resign after the big scandal^TM^?”, realized the answer was “nothing”, and gave us the world we live in now

[–] SchillMenaker@hexbear.net 8 points 2 weeks ago

I think it's more that they saw Trump constantly trying to ignore all that shit and get increasingly rewarded for it. The biggest political mistakes he made in his first term were all from acting like the kind of politician for whom "How dare you sir? How absolutely dare you?" is a knockout punch.

By the second half of his first term the entire Republican party had embraced his approach and once Bernie started making headway in 2019 the Dems quickly followed suit.