The long term picture is what is most worrying: the damage is extensive. Very extensive. People are under the impression that this is an anomaly (and it is, to be sure) that will be corrected with an election.
It won’t.
The Office of the President of the United States and the entire Executive Branch is completely damaged. It has, within the space of three months, devolved into a putrid mess. If it were a patient, the body is riddled with cancer.
The Legislative Branch is similarly infected: a decade of non-governance and a collection of the nation’s stupidest people has reduced the second branch of government into a cowering shadow of itself.
And the judicial branch has a stolen seat, forever tainted by the appointment of someone picked off a list by an unfit, unqualified, incompetent scumbag.
All things being equal, a Democratic sweep of 2018 is neither guaranteed nor going to un-do the devastation. You have a party of ugly dystopian Confederates who have shown they can never be trusted. And you have a Democratic Party that is unwilling to confront its own sexism, racism and purity tests because it wants to be “inclusive,” when the most lasting damage has been done by people who have a list of demands but never show up in midterms and don’t get involved. Hell, as we’ve seen in the Nevada primary, hardly any of them bothered to register as a Democrat.
Oh, and you have what no voter supression trick could ever accomplish: 56% of eligible voters not bothering.
Oh, and there’s more! You have an Electoral College comprised of clearly incompetent delegates who honestly had an extraordinary chance to do its one “in case of emergency, break glass” function and make history. Except, as AJP Taylor noted, history failed to turn.
In the words of Ms. Tilda Swinton to Keanu Reeves in “Constantine”: you’re fucked.