Venezuela was supposed to be easy.

In the distant past of several months ago, toppling the government of Nicolas Maduro was not just another of the Trump administration’s cocktail napkin sketches of a foreign policy goal. The cause of saving Venezuela from the evils of Bolivarian socialism should instead have been a project that would unite Democrats and Republicans, #Resistance fighters and Trumpian courtiers, teary-eyed Obama liberals and unreconstructed post-9/11 neocons — though the last two had never been as distant from one another as some half-heartedly pretend.

By the Broadway musical logic of this motley assembly, rallying behind a soon-to-be-reborn Venezuelan democracy (so self-evident that no one need actually vote for it) should have been so obvious, so pressing, so overriding, that the only ones who could oppose such a noble design would be contrarian outliers beyond the pale — people who could and must be safely ignored.