So this is the country that Trump – unshackled and unbound – can forge, starting three months from now. Oblivious to the environment, hostile to migrants, snarling towards Muslims and seeking to roll back rights that took decades to secure. It would be a country that saw the constitution not as its greatest gift, but as an obstacle to overcome. It would see diversity not as a strength, but as a fact to be tolerated, at best. And anyone objecting to any of this would find the big institutions, all three branches of government, arrayed against them. RIP America? It certainly might feel that way.

For what we saw in the astonishingly ugly campaign fought by Donald Trump would be only an inkling of what is to follow. Or, as one senior Democrat put it to me: “The horror show has not even started. This is just the overture.”