Shocking, but the electoral thumping of President Donald Trump delivered by American voters last Tuesday was not, in Donald Trump's estimation, a reflection on Donald Trump. "I wasn't on the ballot, and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE," posted the most spectacular, and spectacularly successful, snake oil salesman not merely in American history but in anyone's history. "Thank you for your attention to this matter."

Thank you for your attention to this matter, indeed. "I am on the ballot when you think about it," he told Virginia Republicans on Sept. 17. "I AM ON THE BALLOT," he posted — all caps — on Oct. 4. "Really, I am on the ballot," he proclaimed on Nov. 3. The day after the midterms, the Washington Post reported that Trump had pronounced himself on the ballot in this election or had urged voters to vote as if he was 63 times.

Which is why his pretense that the Democratic landslide was something other than a massive repudiation of him seemed like nothing so much as putting lipstick on a pig.

No one's buying it.

Everyone knows that Democrats' sweeping victories in places like South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Kansas, Ohio and Mississippi — Mississippi! — reflected widespread revulsion at the witches' brew of corruption, lying, cruelty and assault on the rule of law that has constituted Trump's presidency. The only thing more humiliating would have been had he lost Mar-a-Lago.

But by week's end, Trump served notice that he wasn't going to be deterred by any old electoral shellacking. No, he was going to double down on the kind of conduct that, better late than never, has turned America against him. He fired the relatively compos mentis Susie Wiles as his chief of staff, and replaced her with the rather less so Stephen Miller, architect of and cheerleader for many of the president's most reviled policies and practices. Miller, who presents as something of a cross between the small-time criminal played by Peter Lorre in Casablanca and Satan, is an odd choice for someone who badly needs to convince America that he isn't as awful as they think.

Indeed, each day brings with it more video of the president making him look less than, let's say, altogether steady. To only slightly paraphrase Margo Channing in All About Eve: Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy two years.

The morning after the midterms, democratic leaders were questioned about their approach to Trump now that they would comfortably control both houses of Congress. They were ready with an answer, settled upon after weeks of message-testing by message mavens: they were going to focus on the price of oil, the cost of living and health care.

"What about impeachment?" came the questions. We are not about retribution, came the responses. "What about accountability?" came the follow-up. Of course, there should be accountability, was the reply.

But here's the problem. What the Democrats mean by holding Trump and Team "accountable" is far from clear, putting it mildly. When Democrats controlled the House in 2019-2020 and attempted to investigate the Trump administration, they were met with a middle finger: a defiant refusal to turn over evidence, married to a taunting dare to do something about it. In response to the well-grounded demands by congressional committees for evidence, the president directed his counsel, Pat Cipollone, to instruct Congress to pound sand. "The president cannot allow your constitutionally illegitimate proceedings to distract him and those in the executive branch from their work on behalf of the American people," Cipollone wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the chairmen of the committees who had demanded investigative material from the administration.

Put simply: you're getting nothing from us. But have a nice day.

That kiss-off will be a love letter compared to what Trump will tell the new Congress when it seeks to hold him "accountable" starting in early January.

That's going to place the question of whether to impeach squarely on the table. It will be a choice between impeaching and laying the shameful record of the past two years before the American people or agreeing to be told that that record is none of the American people's business.

That's an easy one.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States Attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.

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