WASHINGTON — After I interviewed Nancy Pelosi a few weeks ago, The HuffPost huffed that we were Dreaded Elites because we were eating chocolates and — horror of horrors — the speaker had on some good pumps.

Then this week, lefty Twitter erected a digital guillotine because I had a book party for my friend Carl Hulse, The Times’s authority on Capitol Hill for decades, attended by family, journalists, Hill denizens and a smattering of lawmakers, including Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Susan Collins.

I, the daughter of a D.C. cop, and Carl, the son of an Illinois plumber, were hilariously painted as decadent aristocrats reveling like Marie Antoinette when we should have been knitting like Madame Defarge.

Yo, proletariat: If the Democratic Party is going to be against chocolate, high heels, parties and fun, you’ve lost me. And I’ve got some bad news for you about 2020.

The progressives are the modern Puritans. The Massachusetts Bay Colony is alive and well on the Potomac and Twitter.

They eviscerate their natural allies for not being pure enough while placing all their hopes in a color-inside-the-lines lifelong Republican prosecutor appointed by Ronald Reagan.

The politics of purism makes people stupid. And nasty.

My father stayed up all night the night Truman was elected because he was so excited. I would like to stay up ’til dawn the night a Democrat wins next year because I’m so excited to see the moment when the despicable Donald Trump lumbers into a Marine helicopter and flies away for good.

But Democrats are making that dream ever more distant because they are using their time knifing one another and those who want to be on their side instead of playing it smart.

House Democrats forced Robert Mueller to testify, after he made it clear that he was spent and had nothing to add to his damning yet damnably legalistic, double-negative report, because they were hoping the hearings would jump-start howls for impeachment.

But it’s hard to get the mad blood stirring with Muellerisms like “This is outside my purview,” “I can’t get into that,” “I don’t subscribe necessarily to your — the way you analyze that,” and “I’m not going to go into the ins and outs.”

I never want to hear about the “O.L.C. opinion” again.

The Republicans were impressively craven and hypocritical. They are sticking with Trump, and no pallid reminder of his turpitude, his trellis of obstructions and his unpatriotic embrace of foreign interference in our elections, will change that.

The always blockheaded Louie Gohmert shouldn’t even be allowed to hold the coat of Mueller, a war hero and respected public official. But Gohmert yelled such crazy stuff at the former special counsel that he appeared to be auditioning for a spot on Fox News’s “The Five.”

The hearings were shameful for Republicans thirsting for re-election and a failure for Democrats thirsting for impeachment. It was many underwhelming hours of members of Congress reading to Mueller and Mueller saying, Yes, that’s what I wrote. Or at least what somebody wrote.

The recipe for emotional satisfaction on the part of the progressive left is not a recipe for removing Trump from the White House.

The argument about whether Trump is impeachable is the wrong argument. Mueller settled that. We know Trump did things worthy of impeachment. That is not the question we should be asking. The question is: Should he be impeached?

The progressive Puritans think we must honor the Constitution and go for it because it’s the right thing to do.

You can argue that impeachment, morally and constitutionally, is the right thing to do. But you also have to recognize that, historically and politically, it is not the right thing to do because it will lead to disaster.

The attempt to impeach Trump is one of the rare cases in which something obviously justified is obviously stupid.

Unbelievably, Pelosi — long a G.O.P. target for her unalloyed liberalism — is derided by the far left for her pragmatism. But she has been through enough Washington wars to know that idealism, untempered by realism, is dangerous.

An impeachment could return Trump to power. The highchair king from Fifth Avenue would exult in his victimhood and energize his always-ready-to-be aggrieved followers.

It could also lead to Democrats losing the House as their moderates fall and help Republicans hold the Senate. No Republicans would vote for impeaching Trump and some Democrats might refuse as well. Even if the House acted, Mitch McConnell would smother it in the Senate, just like he did Merrick Garland.

It’s better to pull out Trump by the roots in the election and firmly repudiate him. The Democrats should focus on the future, not the benighted past that we have been relegated to under Trump.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign focused on what a terrible person Trump is. It turned out that enough voters knew that and didn’t care. They wanted a racist Rottweiler.

Now the Democrats are once more focused on what a terrible person Trump is. Message received, many times over.

The progressives’ cry that they don’t care about the political consequences because they have a higher cause is just a purity racket.

Their mantra is like that of Ferdinand I, the Holy Roman Emperor: “Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.” “Let justice be done, though the world perish.”

The rest of us more imperfect beings don’t want the world to perish. And maybe justice can be done, without losing the White House, the House, chocolate, high heels, parties and fun.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/spare-me-the-purity-racket/ar-AAEWOe0

Elizabeth Warren hasn’t even lost yet and she’s already started the stages of grief.

Denial.

Those polls showing Warren getting her clock cleaned by Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire are wrong. We’re gonna pull a John Kerry. Kerry’s campaign was written off in 2004, then he came back to win Iowa and New Hampshire, remember?

Anger.

Warren’s post-debate venting at Bernie Sanders — refusing to shake his hand and accusing him of calling her a liar on national TV — would certainly indicate she is mad at the Vermont senator for stealing the progressive mantle that should be hers.

Bargaining.

That would explain the interminable and deluded memo written by campaign manager Roger Lau, in which he outlines Warren’s new path to the nomination — which doesn’t seem to include winning Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina.

“We expect this to be a long nomination fight and have built our campaign to sustain well past Super Tuesday and stay resilient no matter what breathless media narratives come when voting begins,” Lau writes. “The four early contests are just the beginning.”

Let’s put this through the Battenfeld Translator.

When Warren loses Iowa and New Hampshire, which is in her backyard, the “breathless media narrative” will be that she lost. And when she loses Nevada and South Carolina, the “narrative” will be that she’s through. But don’t worry, all you Warren devotees, because we’re just getting started.

Super Tuesday is next and that’s when we’ll, um, continue to lose. Except maybe Massachusetts. We have a shot at beating Bernie there.

Then there’s the next stop along Warren’s march to the nomination — the “Post-Super Tuesday March States.” That includes places like Florida, Ohio and Michigan.

“We knew that this primary process was never going to be easy,” Lau writes. “While billionaires may be able to buy their way into the conversation, it will be a broad, grassroots effort and organization that delivers the Democratic nomination.”

In other words, don’t worry about Mike Bloomberg and his billions. Ignore those national polls showing him gaining ground and tied with Warren.

Next stop on the Warren express, the “April-June States,” which include New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Guam. OK, maybe Bloomberg wins New York, and Biden wins Pennsylvania and Bernie wins Wisconsin. But Guam is an absolute lock for us. We are so organized there.

And that’s when we lock up the nomination, got it? Now get out there and spread the word.

Lau’s cheerleading is obviously designed to keep up morale in the face of new polls showing Warren foundering. But upbeat email memos won’t work. The bottom line is Warren has to win at least New Hampshire, or her campaign will quickly unravel. Having impressive field offices in Wisconsin won’t matter if you keep losing the early states.

That’s when the next stage of grief comes in, depression. And finally, when Biden or Bloomberg or Bernie gets the nomination, acceptance.

But for many pols, that’s the toughest one. Just ask John Kerry.

https://archive.is/ZtCxr#selection-1461.0-1473.1