Outgoing top-Democrat in the U.S. Senate Harry Reid of Nevada has long counted as evidence against the mainstream media and supposedly reasonable members of his party, for reasons that Jim Geraghty details here:

Dear friends in the media: you can’t complain about “fake news” and lament the poor ethics, overheated rhetoric, petty partisanship and sheer nastiness of our elected leaders, and then turn around and compare Harry Reid to Yoda. When you do that, you whittle away at the disincentive to do things like tell blatant lies and make baseless accusations about your political enemies.

Yes, it’s awful when Donald Trump does this sort of thing about his rivals. But where do you think Trump would get the idea that he could lie blatantly and suffer no consequential rebuke?

I can’t remember a political point that’s been better or more-quickly proven than the hypocrisy of the Left under Obama.  The whole progressive edifice has been decisively proven to be a power-seeking sham.  That doesn’t mean they won’t be able to reinvigorate their success in fooling a population that pays little attention, but among those who pay attention, once-assumed credibility is gone for many individuals and institutions.

Politics and a culture war can be messy business, so players will make judgment calls in any given situation, but at some point, it has to be evident that principle ultimately overcomes power or else people will rightly judge you by your actions, not your stated intentions.