Jim Geraghty notes Ezra Klein’s column urging the Democrats to shut down the federal government. The alleged point of the shutdown would be to draw attention to the party’s message. What message, you ask? Klein thinks Senator Jon Ossoff (D., Ga.) has done a good job of articulating it, and he quotes him at some length.

Corruption is why they just defunded nursing homes to cut taxes for the rich. Corruption is why you pay a fortune for prescriptions. Corruption is why your insurance claim keeps getting denied. Corruption is why hedge funds get to buy up all the houses in your neighborhood, driving you out of the market, and then your corporate landlord ignores your calls during a gas leak. Corruption is why that ambulance costs $3,000 after you just had to get your choking toddler to the hospital.

So Trump promised to attack a broken system. I get it. Ripe target. But here’s the thing. He’s a crook. And a con man. And he wants to be a king. Yes, the system really is rigged, but Trump’s not unrigging it. He’s re-rigging it for himself.

Note, however, that almost all of this is a boilerplate Democratic attack that could have been used against any Republican president and does very little to highlight the special dangers to America that Klein has just spent his preceding column inches arguing that Trump poses. And not only could that attack have been used against earlier Republicans; it was. The Democrats spent much of 2005–06 campaigning against what they called a Republican “culture of corruption.” There’s no rule against recycling in politics, but I thought Klein’s whole point is that we are living in a uniquely perilous moment that has to be met.

Perhaps less relevant to the political utility of Ossoff’s argument is that it is, from top to bottom, nonsense. Hedge funds are not responsible for the housing shortage; any viable health system is going to have to deny a significant portion of claims; medicines cost a lot mostly because developing them is expensive. Blaming every problem, or even imperfection, in our society on malevolent forces makes it harder for us to actually improve our conditions. It’s also a game I suspect Trump can play better than Ossoff and co.