While I do realize that a very entertaining playground fight between the world's most prominent schoolboys is currently raging, I am going to exercise a monumental amount of restraint and not address the dustup between Elon Musk and Donald Trump today. Besides, by tomorrow, there'll probably be several more amusing developments to talk about, right?

Instead, I am going to stick to what I intended to write about today, which is to give some advice for Democrats seeking for ways to realign the party's fortunes. Partly, this is a question of style, although we're going to start with some substance that has been sorely missing from Democrats resisting what Donald Trump has been doing in office. This column should be seen as a companion to yesterday's column, which was more ideological in nature.

Fight presidential corruption

Donald Trump has no guardrails left. All the "adults in the room" from his first term have been banished (or left in disgust). All that remains are toadies who crawl over each other to offer up the best praise for the Dear Leader. No impulse Trump has is ever questioned or rejected -- they are all celebrated, no matter how bad an idea or how illegal anything Trump wants to do is.

This is met with rather muted outrage from Democrats, which isn't really enough. Trump is taking advantage of the fact that a lot of the restraints on presidents historically have been merely traditional. To put it another way, a lot of them are "unwritten rules." Since they aren't explicitly written down, Trump is free to break all of them (at least, that's the way he sees things).

So where is the Democratic effort to write this stuff down?

Democrats shouldn't just be complaining about this stuff from the sidelines, they should launch a concerted effort to codify the rules for a president, with a heavy slant towards fighting presidential corruption.

I should begin by admitting that because of the nature of the separation of powers, a lot of this is going to be charting new constitutional territory. Even if Democrats win back both houses of Congress and the White House (which would allow them to pass such measures and get them signed into law), much of it will likely be challenged in courts, and some of these ideas will admittedly require constitutional amendments. But that's no excuse for not trying. Because there are two levels to this effort -- one is legal, which means eventually the Supreme Court will get to weigh in, and the other is political. Having this political fight is worthwhile no matter what the ultimate outcome of any of these ideas is, because it shoves it all into the center ring of the political arena and puts a big spotlight on everything Trump is doing to destroy public faith in the office of the presidency. Which is exactly what Democrats should be doing right now.

The list of Trump's corrupt and unethical practices is a long one, so what I'm about to propose isn't going to be a complete list but should be seen as more of a starting point. Start with the low-hanging fruit (the obvious corruption) and later expand it to include anything else that needs addressing.

The most obvious starting point is Trump's businesses and his family's businesses. Laws should be drafted to force any president to fully divest from his businesses or leave them in a blind trust with iron-clad guidelines to prevent the president from blatantly profiting off his time in office. This would mean ending all those real estate deals his children are arranging for Trump in foreign countries, obviously. It would also ban Trump's foray into cryptocurrency, where (in perhaps the most blatant corruption from any president) he sold the opportunity to have dinner with him to the people who in essence gave him the most money.

Also, mandate that anyone running for president has to fully and completely release his or her taxes to the public, for perhaps the previous five or ten years. And that his or her tax returns while in office also be publicly released.

Ban the president from any "executive orders of attainder." The Constitution already bans the legislature from passing "bills of attainder," but this protection needs to expand to the executive branch as well. This would prevent a president from targeting any one person or business with any sort of federal pressure or retaliation, since that's not how the government was designed to operate. Trump violates this norm regularly, threatening corporations he doesn't like (he's doing so today, by threatening Elon Musk's businesses) or educational institutions he doesn't approve of or even whole states for having laws he dislikes. None of this should be allowed. Petty grievances are no way to run a country. So ban all retaliatory threats from the Oval Office.

This would have to extend in some way to the Justice Department as well, although how to do so may wind up being tricky to implement. The Justice Department is part of the executive branch, meaning that the attorney general reports to the president. In the post-Watergate world (and post-J. Edgar Hoover world, at the F.B.I.), presidents have been very careful to allow the Department of Justice (and all its enforcement arms) to operate independently -- so the president doesn't pick up the phone and tell the attorney general to launch an investigation into one of his perceived enemies. Obviously, that unwritten rule has been trampled upon by Trump. He even uses Orwellian doublespeak to insist that he is "ending the weaponization of the Justice Department" while he is instead doing the exact opposite -- he is in fact actively weaponizing the Justice Department against his enemies. This needs to stop.

As mentioned, there are plenty of other things that could add to these basics. Banning a president from accepting multimillion-dollar gifts from foreign governments that are going to wind up in his presidential library, for one. Or how about requiring federal agents to identify themselves and be in uniform (without masks covering their faces) when making arrests? It's sad that I even have to include such a thing, but that's the America we now live in -- one in which such rules should explicitly be written down.

Democrats should even make the attempt to overturn the kinglike powers the Supreme Court bestowed upon the presidency, by pushing a law that would remove any legal immunity for what presidents do while in office. No one should be above the law in America, not even the president.

Reining in the corruption of the pardon process would also be tricky, since the Constitution gives presidents that right, but at the very least Democrats should try to make "pay to play" pardons illegal.

Again, some of these ideas may not survive judicial scrutiny, and some would require constitutional amendments. But that shouldn't stop Democrats from trying, since making a big political stink out of all of this stuff is worthwhile even if every part of it doesn't succeed.

Donald Trump is the most corrupt president we have had in a very long while. Perhaps ever. His corruption and unethical behavior is blatant and obvious and in-your-face. You don't have to go looking very far to find examples of it.

So why aren't Democrats using it as a political bludgeon? Why don't they propose a giant 10-point "Ending Presidential Corruption Act" and get out there and campaign on it? They can call out Republicans who have been complete hypocrites on the issue -- remember all those investigations of Hunter Biden? -- and ask why the Trump children are allowed to make thousands of times the money that Hunter ever did. Anyone against the act would be standing strongly for presidential corruption, after all (the bill wouldn't mention any president by name, of course, but then again it wouldn't really have to). Sell the bill politically as: "Up until Donald Trump, unwritten rules were enough. Now they aren't. We have to make sure such blatant presidential corruption never happens again! We have to write down all those unwritten rules."

It's really a no-brainer, when it comes to the political upside to launching such an effort. Get a group of legal and ethical and constitutional experts together, get a list of Trump's corrupt acts to target, and draft language that has a chance of passing muster with the judiciary. Don't just fight Donald Trump, instead fight what he has done to our system of government. Because that's a fight worth fighting, even though Trump's name is never going to be on the ballot again.

Fight hard and make some noise

Speaking of fighting...

Democrats need to fight back a lot harder than they have been. I would be willing to bet that a whole lot of the collapse of public support for the Democratic Party is because they don't seem to have much fight in them at all.

There are exceptions, of course. There are Democrats who are out there fighting hard and showing real energy. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spring to mind, as do a few others in Congress. But for the most part, Democrats aren't out there getting their faces on television and they aren't out there denouncing Trump's corruption and illegality anywhere near enough.

Democrats need to understand something basic that it seems a lot of them either don't want to admit or are incapable of reacting to. Politics is now entertainment, period. The two always did share a close relationship, but with the advent of Trump the entertainment value dominates. Democrats (and anti-Trump Republicans) have never really been able to adequately adapt to this new paradigm.

These days, it's not so much what you say as how you say it. Playground taunts are not only now acceptable, they should be seen as almost necessary. Look at what is happening today for proof -- the entire political world is glued to their screens to see what nasty tweet the richest man in the world or the United States president has just launched. We are all held rapt by a hissy fit that is worthy of junior high school students (if not elementary school students). That is the political world we now live in, and it's not going to change any time soon.

So where are the political strategists and Democratic politicians who are adept at playing this game? Taunts made to get under your opponents' skin are big news these days -- especially when they goad that opponent into reacting in like fashion.

As I said, there are individual Democrats who know how to use a little showmanship (not just in the playground-fight arena). There are Democrats who know how to dramatically make political points and get their faces in the news for doing so. Katie Porter springs to mind, although she does not currently hold office (she is running for governor of California next year). Jasmine Crockett is an absolute fireball as well. Chris Murphy of Connecticut is doing an admirable job too. Democrats who know how to interject some entertainment value into their political persona are the party's strongest asset right now, although some in the party establishment refuse to admit it by putting them in prominent roles, which is a shame.

Look over on the Republican side. The people with nationwide name recognition are the ones who know how to make a splash. Democrats need to match these folks with their own firebrands. Politics has changed, and refusing to admit that -- eternally wishing for a "return to normal" -- is political suicidal right now.

What the public wants right now is to see politicians with some energy. They want to see Democrats who can fight back effectively. It's all about showing some strength -- it's not so much about the particulars of the party's political agenda.

If I were in charge of the central committee of the party, I would consider all sorts of new ideas for how to get Democrats in the news. How about holding a few debates or town halls with the Democrats who are quite obviously going to run for president? Have one of these per month -- it'd be easy to set up with some news networks. One month invite Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom to have a little mini-debate. The next month, feature J.B. Pritzker and Gretchen Whitmer. Put all the obvious proto-candidates' names in a hat and just randomly draw two each month. Have them hash out what they think a winning Democratic agenda would be, with a moderator and an audience. This would be good and valuable practice for when the actual campaign begins, and it would showcase Democrats to the public in a big way.

That's just one idea -- there are plenty of other ways the party could encourage Democrats to get themselves out there and show some fighting spirit. Because that's what people are looking for right now. They want to see some energetic Democrats express some true outrage, and they want it to be entertaining as well.

Walk and chew gum

I do realize that this column is almost as contradictory as yesterday's column. Yesterday, I simultaneously argued for and against litmus tests within the party (versus having a big tent attitude). Today I am arguing both for and against highlighting a specific agenda with a list of political proposals on it. But the party should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

The beauty of putting together such an agenda -- going back to Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" -- is that it allows politicians to use shorthand. They can just say they support the agenda without having to get into the weeds of each item. This saves time and it allows a politician to check the box (supporting the agenda) and then quickly move on: "Yes, I support the Ending Presidential Corruption Act, but today I'd like to talk about the rigged American economy and what I'd do to end giant corporations from ripping everyone off."

It's hard to get noticed in today's fractured media environment, but every once in a while something floats to the top and goes viral. Democrats need to make the attempt to do so with their most charismatic and energetic voices, in as many media outlets as possible. The recent success of the term "TACO" proves that it is still possible to do so.

Democrats need to work more on their follow-through as well. When someone comes up with a brilliant putdown of Republicans or the Republican position on something, every Democrat should start using it. Sing from the same choirbook, and keep singing from it for at least a couple weeks, to hammer the message home. Democrats have always been rather weak on this front, admittedly, so they need to work hard on getting better at it. When some Democrat comes up with a scathing zinger, every other Democrat should make a beeline to any reporter in sight and repeat it with a hearty laugh: "Did you hear what the senator just said? Well, let me add to that...."

This stuff really isn't rocket science, folks. Democrats need to get up, dust themselves off, and show some fighting mettle. They need to do so in a way that breaks into the news cycle in a dramatic way. They need to tap into the fascination with conflict (even conflict at the schoolboys-on-the-playground level) that dominates the media right now. Because at this point, that's the only way Democrats are going to get their message out. Get some feisty Democrats out in front of the cameras, and then cheer them on and repeat their zingers. Decry presidential corruption and vow that you will put an end to it forever. Attack the Republican agenda with all the zeal it deserves.

Rinse, and repeat.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant