For once, it all happened more or less as we foresaw — and by “we” I mean risk-averse political commentators who hugged the polling averages and projections tight while resisting both Betomania and the occasional flashbacks to 2016. A good night for Republicans in the Senate. An excellent night for Democrats in the House. The Trumpian Upper Midwest swinging back toward Democrats. Red-state senate voters sticking with the G.O.P. The mobilize-the-base strategy falling just short for Democrats in Florida and Georgia. A rebuke to Trump in the overall returns, but not a presidency-ending repudiation. Two years of chaos and hysteria ending in a return to stalemate.

Between their Senate gains and a few surprising gubernatorial victories Republicans probably have enough consolation prizes to feel O.K. about the outcome. Trump critics on the right will feel a little better than O.K., since now the House can check and investigate our morally challenged president while the Senate keeps confirming conservative judges.

But this election confirms that, contra certain Trump enthusiasts, the #MAGA era in right-wing politics is essentially a defensive era, in which G.O.P. leverages a fortunate Electoral College win and an advantage in the Senate to fill the courts and delay liberal ambitions for a time — but fails, conspicuously, to reap political rewards from the current economic expansion and to build an actual popular majority.

Instead, after its nominee traded a lot of suburban voters for stronger working-class support in 2016, the Trump-era Republican Party has continued to hemorrhage suburbanites while also giving back some of those Midwestern, blue-collar gains. The political strategy for Republicans after Trump’s victory should have been obvious: Seal the working-class realignment with a dose of economic populism, hold the suburbs by dialing back the Trumpian excesses. Instead the president let congressional Republicans have their way on policy, and they let him be himself in other ways — which makes the Democratic sweep in the House exactly the outcome that both the soon-departing Paul Ryan and the president deserve.