Fred Hiatt writes: Trump opponents can’t afford to think that getting rid of Trump is all they need to do.

Neera Tanden and Matt Browne, in a recent Post op-ed on the French presidential election, noted that Emmanuel Macron did not win his landslide victory simply by stressing the danger of electing his populist, Russia-sympathizing opponent, Marine Le Pen. Although many observers said Macron lacked a substantive platform, Tanden, who is president and chief executive of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, and Browne, a senior fellow there, argued that Macron actually set out a “bold agenda” for political reform.

“For progressives in the United States, this is a critical lesson,” Tanden and Browne wrote. To rebut the politics of “ethno-nationalist populism” progressives need to offer more than opposition — they need “an aggressive agenda for political reform.”

We are far from knowing the whole story of Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election, its relationship over the years with Trump and his businesses, and the administration’s possible efforts to keep the truth from emerging. The country needs Mueller and members of Congress, of both parties, working overtime to expose that story.

But the country also needs to beware of the fantasy that the nation’s problems, and the Democratic Party’s, could be solved if only that one man could magically be made to disappear. [Continue reading…]