Trump posts video targeting Murkowski over vote against Blanche confirmation

Lisa Murkowski voting no on Todd Blanche is not exactly breaking news. She's built a whole career out of being the Republican Democrats can count on when it matters, and Susan Collins usually shows up right behind her. What's more interesting is that Trump felt the need to post a video about it on a Saturday morning instead of just letting the confirmation happen and moving on, because it did happen. Blanche got through. This wasn't a cliffhanger.

That's the part worth sitting with. When you win anyway, the smarter move is usually to bank the win and save your fire for the fights you might actually lose. Instead we get another round of the same script: Murkowski defects, Trump posts, cable news covers the posting, and nobody's mind changes about anything. Alaska voters already know what they're getting with her. Trump supporters already know what they think of her. The video doesn't move a single vote in the Senate or a single voter in Anchorage.

None of this means Murkowski's vote was defensible. Blanche is qualified, he was going to be confirmed regardless, and joining Democrats to vote no on a Trump AG pick is a fairly obvious signal about where her loyalties sit on any given day. That's a legitimate thing to call out. But there's a difference between pointing that out and turning it into a full production for the base to consume. The confirmation stood. The outrage cycle didn't need to.

At some point the party has to decide whether it wants to spend its energy litigating fights it already won or building the coalition it needs for the ones still ahead. Posting about Murkowski for the hundredth time is the easy version of politics. It's just not the useful one.