1. The Washington Post exposed a fraud Monday, but some don't think it will make a difference. They are wrong. washingtonpost.com/investigations…
2. Exposing a fraud is a public good, in and of itself, and that exposure will pay dividends politically, even if we can't see how.
3. After the Post reported on a woman pretending to be a victim of Roy Moore, many otherwise smart people lamented that exposing Project Veritas' fraud would not sway the president's supporters.
4. They said its leader, James O'Keefe, will spin failure into success, solicit greater donations to perpetrate greater frauds, and go happily on his way.
5. This is no doubt true, but beside the point.
6. The people who believe hucksters like O'Keefe are not receptive to facts and argument.
7. Much of what they believe to be true is rooted in a hash of intellectual dishonesty, victimhood and self-delusion.
8. The Washington Post's bullet-proof reporting is not going to reach them. It is, however, going to reach others, and that's the point.
9. What others? The reasonable, the educated, the shrewd and the sane.
10. Specifically, white women.
11. @RonBrownstein noted Tuesday that a ABC/Washington Post survey found "fully 70 percent of college-educated whites said [President] Trump lacked the temperament and personality to serve effectively as president
12. "moreover, two-thirds of college-educated white women said he was biased against women and three-fifths said he was biased against African-Americans."
13. If we have not already, we are approaching a peak moment in which the public has figured out this president, and there may be no going back.
14. Sadly, many remain in doubt. I get that.
15. The 2016 election caused us to lose confidence in the American electorate. But that doubt overlooks something important: Most people did not vote for Trump.
16. The American electorate was right about this president, and it continues to be right. My question: Are journalists listening?
17. So far, the president's unpopularity has been taken seriously by few writers. (@NateSilver538 and @jbview are two.)
18. In the early months of Trump's presidency, reporters roamed the countryside in search of voters unfazed by his idiocy.
19. That remains the case, but the genre's endurance appears to be fading.
20. Even last weekend's mild but controversial profile of a white supremacist exposed Trump's so-called movement to the light of scrutiny, and it barely survived. (Indeed, the subject didn't.)
21. The public is figuring out this president, and what remains generally of "movement conservatism," but has the press?
22. This latest from the Post gives me hope.
23. I can't recall another time when a newspaper of its caliber unloaded on a weaseling scam operation like Project Veritas.
24. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)
25. Certainly none has during the Trump era in which attacks on democratic norms, the press and the First Amendment are normal.
26. In the past, most scams like this would have gone unreported for fear of the newspaper appearing biased. That was not the case Monday.
27. Perhaps Martin Baron, the Post's editor, figured his paper would be attacked whether or not his reporters revealed O'Keefe's fraud.
28. Damned if he did or didn't, Baron may have decided to hell with playing along. Let's inform the citizenry and serve democracy.
29. The electorate isn't alone in figuring out this president. So did Hillary Clinton.
30. She knew half of Trump's base is "deplorable" even as the other half, as she said, feels "the government has let them down, the economy has let them down,
31. "nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they're just desperate for change." politifact.com/truth-o-meter/…
32. That half continues to be reachable with facts and argument.
33. As for the deplorables? Not a chance.
34. So too have Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. They had Trump's number long ago.
35. The president can lie all he wants, but that achieves nothing in doing the hard work of governing – specifically, in avoiding a humiliating shutdown this month of the United States government.
36. Despite a reputation for being a master negotiator, Trump has given us reason to believe he would not recognize leverage if it fell on him.
37. He *must* engage the Democrats to avoid a shutdown, but appears to believe he can alienate them without consequence.
38. We have days to go. The president's advisers have time to correct him.
39. But if Trump doubles down, and the Democrats call his bluff (and they will), they will have served democracy in ways as meaningful as the Washington Post's revealing of Project Veritas' pitiful con.
40. Not only are deplorables deplorable; they are weak. (cf @ElizabethDrewOH newrepublic.com/article/145529…)
42. Thanks for reading. Please share and argue and do what must be done. usnews.com/opinion/thomas…
