There is this trap, I think, that many are falling into of treating Donald Trump like a run-of-the-mill lousy Republican president who is rubber stamping Paul Ryan’s awful domestic agenda. If this were Marco Rubio/Ted Cruz or even Jeb! and we were faced with an inhumane ACA repeal, I’d take more comfort from last night’s results in Georgia and South Carolina. But let’s remember that Trump is a president who is currently under FBI investigation, who fired the FBI Director and possibly obstructed justice, whose National Security Adviser and son-in-law might have committed light treasons. He also tweets unhinged gibberish late at night. Karen Handel didn’t repudiate him but rather embraced him. If core Republicans still back him, then the craven GOP will continue to do so. That’s why an upset last night would have been a key event or turning point. It also might have helped derail the passage of the ACA repeal but that also now seems unlikely. If a party that is in bed with a mobster and steadily starts to behave in ways that makes it clear they were mobsters all along are still winning special elections against non-mobsters, that’s a problem and an indictment of the country. I’d like to think that if Hillary Clinton were in the same situation as Trump, even a Nancy Pelosi district might have been lost in a special election no matter the Democratic advantage. If anything, we certainly should just focus on improving our performance in 2018 and defeating Trump in 2020 because impeachment is fantasy and re-election is not entirely off the table.