"He was just everywhere": A tired country after four years of Trump

“In the last four years, has there been a day when Trump wasn’t somewhere in your orbit?” said Mr. Betras, the former chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party. “Every day, I couldn’t get him out. He was just everywhere. It was like an omnipresence.”

For Mr. Betras and so many others, this was life in the Trump era: four years of waking up every morning to a new revelation, an impulsive tweet, a mass protest, a strange new celebrity from the political fringe, an impeachment or two, another thing to argue about and lose friends over. There is no telling when the Trump era will end, but as a purely technical matter, Mr. Trump will no longer be the president on Wednesday afternoon. His departure will leave a country that is divided, impassioned, fearful, radicalized — and worn out.

“It was like, like a car horn,” Mr. Betras said of the perpetual news cycles of the last four years. “You’re having dinner, you know, and initially, the car horn doesn’t bother you. But after about an hour, you’re looking around: ‘Will someone shut that car horn off?!’”