Part of the problem is that Trump’s bar of success is so low that if he doesn’t start nuclear war or cause a depression he will be labeled a success by many. I hope to god Trump is a success. My only complaint is that the voters punished the dems when the GOP obstructed them, but will reward the GOP if the dems cooperate. Politics has gotten to the point where there is no incentive to work with the ruling party. If you work with the ruling party, your base turns on you and primaries you, and the voters reward the ruling party and punish the minority party for any success and achievements.
The dems are in some ways on life support. They have very few state legislatures. The dems are now a regional party consisting of the west coast, the northeast and the big cities. The GOP controls everything else on the state & federal level. Even the fact that the dems control the big cities is somewhat meaningless, because if the GOP controls the state legislature they can just limit the ability of the cities to pass progressive legislation. In Ohio Kasich recently said cities are not allowed to raise their minimum wage. I could see the GOP doing more and more of that in red states with large blue cities (North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, etc)