Sen. Angus King was vilified last week for doing his job.

Around Maine, “No Kings” became “No King” with unsettling speed. In response to his vote to end the shutdown after 41 days, protests sprouted up across the state, angry calls and threats were made to the senator’s offices. Fox News referred to the display as “progressive wrath.”

On Thursday, while it was still being felt, this opinion section published an op-ed by Sen. King, who — in a Q&A format that his communications director said King worked up in his Notes app — made an effort to clear his name.

Online, the abuse in response came thick and fast. “Way to read the room,” wrote one reader. “Didn’t think I could be as disappointed in Angus as I am, continually, with [Sen.] Susan [Collins].”

“Time to retire,” declared another. “Spare me,” wrote a third. “Traitor,” sniffed a fourth.

When members of this editorial board sat down last week, we found ourselves relatively untroubled by the King vote. We certainly didn’t find it treacherous or treasonous; the senator was moving in this direction all along. 

One of our number suggested that King was one of those few representatives in Washington who could afford to let commonsense and expediency prevail, professionally, due to his being independent and in the winter of his career. This point, we agreed, was well made.

Sen. King made a decision not to fight a battle that, reasonably and on balance, he felt was a losing one. The rage in response to that decision doesn’t render it a bad decision.

The bigger political picture is, right now, far bigger than many of us are comfortable with. What about finding fault with the incompetence and intransigence that brought us, over a period of weeks, to this pitiful point?

“I think before too long, knowing the administration, President Trump will give that Democratic base something more substantive to be angry about than agreeing to work with the GOP on ending the shutdown,” ​​Ron Schmidt, a political science professor at the University of Southern Maine, told one of our reporters last week.

That’s right. A very cynical, very lengthy shutdown is over; good. The ordinary work of government can now resume; although it doesn’t make for the sassiest placard, the vigorous pursuit of Affordable Care Act subsidies can and must be part of that.