Republicans won a cost-of-living election in 2024, beating a Democratic Party that much of the country blamed for high prices. Voters were broadly correct in assessing that blame: The Biden administration, with the backing of Congressional Democrats, shoveled trillions of dollars out the door under the auspices of COVID-19 “relief” — ignoring warnings from some of its own ideologically allied economists that the results would be hugely inflationary.

If it hadn’t been for dissenting votes cast by two Democratic senators, that inflation orgy would have swelled by trillions more. Both of those senators, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, are now ex-senators, having been harassed and hounded out of the party by irate leftists. Moderating forces and faces within Democratic politics are getting aggressively marginalized. The guardrails are being pried away.