To travel the liberal byways of social media over recent weeks was to learn that Donald Trump was on the precipice of axing Robert Mueller and was likely to use the days just before Christmas, when we were distracted by eggnog and mistletoe, to lower the blade.

Christmas has come. Christmas has gone. Mueller has not.

To listen to Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders, the tax overhaul that Trump just signed into law is no mere plutocratic folly. It’s “Armageddon” (Pelosi’s actual word). Their opposition is righteous, but how will millions of voters who notice smaller withholdings from their paychecks and more money in their pockets square that seemingly good fortune with such prophecies of doom on a biblical scale?

Some of these Americans may decide that the prophets aren’t to be trusted — and that the president isn’t quite the pestilence they make him out to be.

I’m not minimizing Trump’s capriciousness or cupidity. He could yet fire Mueller, the special counsel. Some conservatives’ intensifying attacks on the counsel and the F.B.I. are clearly grist for that.