The maddening thing about this is that we saw it coming. This flood of shadowy, corrupt dark money was predictable the minute Citizens United came out, just the way state legislatures started passing voter-restriction laws the day after the Shelby County decision.

Some evil right-wing strategist had a brilliant flash of insight, sometime back in the 1980s or ’90s: the road to power leads from the bottom up. Control the state legislatures, you control the Congressional districts and the Electoral College. Control the Electoral College and the Senate, you control the courts. Control the courts, you control the country. So they started building, bit by bit, brick by brick. Took them a few decades, but here we are.

We saw it coming and couldn’t stop it.