It’s not as though the Republicans are going to disappear. Despite a Twitter-addicted leader, expect them to continue to enact a conservative agenda — in fact, they still haven’t given up on health care. There are philosophical differences, as the health care fight showed, between hard-line conservatives, center-right members in states such as Pennsylvania, and the president who struck a populist note during the campaign. But Republican Party members have proved they have discipline. Democrats can’t depend on Trumpian shenanigans and Republican confusion to last forever.

Strategies and challenges

So, for Democrats, what’s the plan? If they work with Trump on anything, they have to tread carefully, and not alienate an unpredictable, volatile base that wants just the opposite. Trump himself has so poisoned the well with accusations against popular former President Obama and dismissive and rude behavior with a long list of perceived enemies, that saying “no” works for a little while. But Democrats proved to be just as divided as the GOP, in last year’s primaries and beyond. The team of Tom Perez and Keith Ellison at the Democratic National Committee has calmed the waters; Perez has asked for committee staffers’ resignations by April 15, no doubt in hopes of starting fresh.

Will Democrats cooperate with GOP colleagues in the House and Senate on issues such as infrastructure and tax reform? Both parties have to first start talking to each other, a feat that seems more probable in the Senate. There is a fine line between cooperation, compromise and capitulation, and both parties, more apart than ever, will need skills to walk it.

Democrats could always mirror the intransigent GOP strategy of the recent past, and see how that works out in 2018 midterm elections. Waiting for a GOP implosion could be as futile as waiting for 2016 voters to realize that Trump was unacceptable or waiting for demographic change to win out.

Of course, the biggest challenge for Democrats might be how to focus on one clear message. With so many potential scandals to chase and moves to be outraged by, nothing might stick or hold the public’s attention for more than a minute, whether it’s potential links between Russia and members of the Trump campaign, conflict of interest involving Trump-owned businesses or the GOP’s relative silence on much of it.