It’s been a dispiriting few days for everyone who believes (knows) Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath during his confirmation hearings. But anyone aware of the raw, animal power of grievance knew it was going to be tough-to-impossible to win both Kavanaugh and the November election. It was always one or the other. Never both.

Partisans of every persuasion are motivated by grievance  — the outrage over being cheated out of something — and can be counted on to dependably rally to the next opportunity to stick it to their offenders. Had Kavanaugh been defeated the right-wing fever bubble — talk radio, FoxNews, Breitbart — would be on fire from now until November 6 with howls of indignation and demands for vengeance.

Oh, but look! The howling and lust for vengeance is going on anyway.

While liberals and professional Democrats generally prefer to project reasonableness and fact-based arguments, conservatives and professional Republicans simply want to win, and win by whatever means possible. Facts and fairness don’t muddle their strategic planning.

And those qualities are appropriate given each side’s base. Republicans of the Trump era are deeply, profoundly invested in a self-defeating nihilism that is indifferent to whether the candidates it supports — Trump, Kavanaugh — ever do anything to improve their lives. A primary objective, possibly even the primary objective, is simply “sticking it to the libs”, the class forever in the bullseye of their roiling animosities and grievances — racial, economic, whatever. (The amount of time and energy that crowd puts into monitoring “lib” reaction to their lunacies is truly bizarre.)

So now, Trump and Republicans are ranting about “Democrat mob rule”, (all those angry women taunting Republican senators in office hallways). The calculation being that this will sustain the current spike in right-wing grievance enough to neutralize the swelling grievance and the left, mainly within the #MeToo movement.

But like modern news cycles, the life-span of most grievance spikes gets shorter every month. It’s tough sustaining committed anger. Grievance is a beast that requires regular infusions of novelty reaccelerate rage, preferably as close to election day as possible. Even the 11-days prior Comey Letter is now too far out to be a reliable anger-driver. It was so 2016.

Mitch McConnell may be one of modern history’s most cynical and reprehensible actors, but McConnell isn’t stupid. He knows that his new base — the Trumpists who went to the ballot box for the first time in 2016 — will need a fresh grievance probably within 72 hours of election day. And — my prediction — Mitch, coordinating with FoxNews, talk radio, Breitbart, et al (still after 30 years a messaging ecosystem liberals can only dream of) — will deliver something.

Motivated women, grievance-stoked liberals and everyone appalled at the racism and corruption of Trump must be prepared for that inevitability.

More to the point of mob anger, liberals need to perform a gut check at this moment and dispense with the hand-wringing over their Kavanaugh tactics. What else would have been “reasonable” or “appropriate”? I saw the author Walter Isaacson on TV this morning tut-tutting about liberal over-reach and the way it had riled-up the Trump base  … as though there was another, better way to respond to Kavanaugh, even without the sexual assault allegations. And why should we think “riling up” the Trumpists is the thing we need to avoid most?

Here’s the real thing: raging grievance is as natural to the Trump base as breathing. Liberals may be embarrassed about it, and wish we could all just enjoy a feisty rose together. But for 30 years the Republican media eco-system has reduced politics to team sport. Them/us, good guys/bad guys, saints/sinners. No nuance is required or needed. In fact, nuance is counter-effective.

Keep it real simple: Sound the alarm. Play the fight songs. Return to battle.

Liberals have to stop worrying about how their indisputably righteous anger over Trump and Trumpist degradation of America’s reputation for moral leadership “fires up the Trump base.” You’re embarrassed by the all the yelling and name-calling. Duly noted. Now get over it. Suck it up and play the game to win.

This is a (for the moment) non-violent form of civil war. Mob anger comes with the game, as the game has been designed by conservatives and is being played today. Self-recrimination is dispiriting.

Trump is a disgrace bordering on tragedy. Kavanaugh would not have been on The Federalist Society’s list of prospects if he wasn’t first and foremost a reliable partisan conservative warrior, as he proved during the Ken Starr “investigation” and the Florida recount. Trumpists are a revolting stew of easily manipulated ignorance, authoritarian phobias and irrational group-think. Those are realities.

What comes next is committing anger to action and driving more of our mob to the polls in November.