“It seems so wrong to use the past tense about Tim Russert,” wrote Kate O’Beirne nine years ago when Russert died suddenly, and it seems wrong now to use it for Kate. They were two of the people one could call “irreplaceable,” because they shared several things.

They died much too young — Kate was 67, and Russert had been ten years younger—but they seemed to have died before their primes happened. Those who seem irreplaceable often have big personalities, contradictory traits, or are doing the kind of work nobody else does, so the spaces they leave go unfilled. Nobody yet has taken the place of Tim Russert, who as Kate said was “grounded in Buffalo,” schooled by Pat Moynihan (who came from Hells Kitchen) and therefore existed outside of “the bubble,” as the great Charles Murray might say. He relished the angst of the 2000 meltdown, so it seems unjust that he was not here last year for that “holy shit” moment on November 8 when it became certain that this was the race of a lifetime, and that Russert was the only person in recent memory who might have understood why Trump won.