The November Reckonings

Trump makes that bad situation worse, but he is not a cause of the party's problems; he is a symptom of them. The risk embedded in a Trump nomination -- assuming a Trump loss -- is that Republicans will derive the wrong lesson. The party's most conservative members will argue that Trump's failure was a matter of insufficient orthodoxy, and that the one true path to electoral success would have been to nominate a Ted Cruz-like true believer.

If Republicans were doomed -- or, more accurately, doomed themselves -- to lose in 2016, it would have been better for them to lose with Cruz. That would at least have had the cleansing, Goldwateresque effect of proving the conservative argument wrong and returning power to the suppressed voices of reason within the party. Now, that fight seems destined to be rerun in 2020.

Democrats have their own rethinking to do, even if they retain the White House.

Beneath the presidential level, it is in dire shape. Since 2008, Democrats have lost 69 House seats, 13 Senate seats, 12 governorships and 900-plus seats in state legislatures. That drains the party of legislative power and empties its bench.

Meantime, Clinton would take office with historically high negative ratings, and be the first Democrat since Grover Cleveland in 1885 to be elected without the party's complete control of Congress. Perhaps chastened Republicans will feel a new urge to conciliation and productivity, but the experience of the Obama presidency suggests a rockier path.

Finally, mirroring the Republicans with Trump, Democrats need to grapple with their ideological future and the restive forces of economic anxiety and anti-establishment anger given voice by Bernie Sanders. His presence in the race has been no boon to Clinton, but it did jump-start a necessary, unfinished debate over the party's path ahead, and what will be the contours of a post-Bill Clinton, post-Obama Democratic party.

November is not the conclusion of an argument. It is, or should be, the beginning of a self-examination by all the players in this dispiriting campaign.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.