What the reaction to the Kirk assassination showed us was that it's not just a few radicals who make the party look bad. That's a fairy tale we've been telling ourselves to avoid facing the depth of the problem. It was a broad-based celebration of murder, from TV commentators to school teachers, thousands of people posting their approval that a husband and father of two small children was killed because they didn't like his speech. Not wackos hiding in a basement somewhere, but regular people with jobs and homes who might have tweeted their glee from the stands while watching their kid's soccer game.

It was shocking, even for someone who already had a low opinion of them, so it must have been even more so for moderate normies who like to think there are just some bad apples on both sides.