It would not surprise me at all if the Democratic response to a midterm loss would be to turn to someone completely outside the institutions of politics simply because he promises to live down to Trumpian standards.

Which brings us to the larger question: What, if anything, will be Donald Trump’s political legacy? His election was a fluke, a perfect storm, an inside straight—pick your metaphor. If you run the 2016 election 10 more times, he probably loses eight of them. But even random events can have very real downstream influences on the world. So does Trump’s election mean that the field has been cleared for nontraditional candidates? Is celebrity and the ability to dominate media now more important than institutional support, candidate skill, and money? Is the bar for expertise now permanently lowered so that a candidate need not demonstrate even basic competencies? Is the standard for personal behavior now so atomized that essentially no past actions or statements are disqualifying?