In politics a week is a long time.

                                                       Harold Wilson

                     Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.

                                                       Bette Davis as Margo Channing in “All About Eve”

The long-awaited midterms are over; the people have spoken, and Donald Trump has been rebuked. Long time red states—Texas, Iowa, Kansas, Georgia—have apparently turned blue or at least purple.

Tuesday’s election obviously was a huge triumph for the Democrats. They captured both houses of Congress. They can prevent whatever legislation Donald Trump may want to enact from passing, although Trump seems to prefer ruling by fiat.

The results are a tribute—belated though it may be—to the decency and good sense of the American public. Lest we forget, however, it was the American public’s gullibility and tolerance for chaos that gave Donald Trump a second chance to work his destructive will.

Some corners of the media have begun writing obituaries for the Republican Party and Donald Trump. It’s a little early, however, to dance on the Republican Party’s grave. We need only to look back as far as 2010. Barack Obama had won a landslide victory in 2008. Democrats won 257 seats in the House and had 58 seats in the Senate. The Republican Party was all but eliminated on the Eastern seaboard above Virginia, with two House seats and one Senate seat. It did look grim for the GOP.

Reporters were writing about the dominance of the Democratic Party for a generation. They forgot how fickle the American electorate is. Two years later, Republicans claimed 63 more seats in the House and six in the Senate, giving them control in the House and putting a roadblock in the way of Obama’s agenda.

We can only hope that the midterm’s results will mean an end to the ill-considered, unnecessary, wasteful war in Iran; to the murder and persecution by masked federal agents of undocumented immigrants as well as American citizens on our streets; to the unauthorized, illegal attacks on small boats in the Caribbean, and too many other lawless acts by a rogue administration. However, much of the damage already done may take decades ro repair.

We can also hope that the new Congress can act to at least patch up the damage done to the social safety net so severely damaged by the 47^th President—to the food stamp program, Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. Congress can act. It’s up to the President to sign the legislation, or veto it, doing further damage if he blocks it to himself, his party and his would-be successor.

The priority for Democrats should be acting on what they campaigned on: affordability. Leave it to Trump to accede or block the way. In either case, the Democrats will have done what they said they would do.

As for investigations, they should be pursued in a low-key, professional way, which may be difficult for politicians seeking the limelight. There’s plenty to investigate for sure. But this isn’t an occasion for blood lust. Impeaching Trump for a third time should not be an option. It would be a distraction from the work that needs to be done, and conviction in the Senate is doubtful. Congress, however, should go ahead and investigate the private-public shady dealings of Trump and his family. In time, given a Democratic or an honest Republican administration, if the evidence is there, they should be prosecuted.

The watchword for the Democrats should be “Proceed with Caution.” The biggest mistake the Democrats can make is to project the present into the future. Any viewer of Frank Capra movies knows that the mob can be with you one moment and savaging you the next. This is a moment. Whether or not it lasts is not entirely under anyone’s control.

Sad to say that despite the overwhelming victory the Democrats won, Trump may not be as constrained as his critics wish. He hasn’t paid much attention to Congress in his first two years, and with the clock running out, he probably won’t pay much attention for the rest of his term. People need to understand that Donald Trump is not a normal president, politician or human being. He has no political agenda. He is passionately pursuing vengeance, retribution, revenge. It is, as so many people have said, all about him.

The most significant sign of bad things to come is the departure of Susie Wiles as the White House chief of staff and the appointment of Stephen Miller to take her place. As has been noted elsewhere, Wiles was a guardrail on Trump’s behavior; Miller is an accelerant.

The next two years will probably not be fun, but victory in the midterms wasn’t a goal or the final destination. The election is and was part of a process without an endpoint. If there is a lesson to be learned, it’s that we can’t turn our backs on public affairs if we want to preserve our democracy. Democracy is a garden that has to be tended constantly, otherwise it will succumb to the threats that are always present.