This

"Even if Donald Trump is smashed in a landslide - a humiliating landslide - next month, the fact is that he's still the 45th president of the United States. You're never going to be able to take that away from him. He will always be there, in the history books, in the pictures on the wall - you're just never going to be able to take that away from him. And I just find that depressing.  The fact that he was able to become the 45th president of the United States, I think, is something this country will never be able to live down. And that's a bigger data point for me than anything that happens next month.  That's undoable."  -- Mehdi Hassan

It's a bigger data point than anything except if he gets another four years.

From time to time, I think of that point about him always having had the privilege of being president, and will be in all our history and photo ops for ex-presidents, and it guts me.  (Worse than Dubya Bush, even.  At least Dubya can act with decorum when pressed.)  Respect for the office has been dealt an enormous blow by having Trump there.  We can't take it away from him, and the shame of it can't be taken away from us.  We have surely been brought down to the lowest levels of governing on the globe.  HE won't be humiliated - he's a narcissist, and narcissists can't be humiliated.  WE're the ones humiliated.  

Maybe we should be.

The only thing that could mitigate the humiliation is if Trump is brought before the law for all his crimes, but unless the State of New York takes it on (and it COULD), it won't happen.  Joe Biden's DOJ won't do it.  A small consolation would be if Congress creates and enforces tough laws to hold presidents accountable for ethical and constitutional violations, but as long as we're running a two-party system without term limits, I don't hold out any hope for that, either.  Not in my lifetime anyway.

This is who we are now.  Another banana republic.