What happens is a battle over the norms.

Joe McCarthy was top of the world once. Communists were the ultimate enemies of the American people and anyone Joe McCarthy didn't like was a Communist. There were witch hunts and cabals and people turning on each other and loyalty tests. And then Joe McCarthy's power broke and he went from being king to being deposed king to being dead. Previously undiagnosed hepatitis? I mean, I'm the OSS? I'ma poisoning the shit out of Joe McCarthy. Be that as it may, the cabalists retreated, went underground, worked behind the scenes and eventually became Manafort & Stone, fomented the Brooks Brothers Rebellion, funded Breitbart and are kings again.

In between, everyone argued about what it means to be American, what American values are. Both parties have spent 50 years appealing to authority through arguing that their "norms" are the real "norms" and the other guy is a stone deviant. You're seeing it now - there's 140-odd representatives insisting that democracy only applies when Republicans win, same as it ever was, sunrise sunset. There's 300-odd representatives insisting that "this is not who we are" even though everyone on the Internet thinks they should be saying "we're better than this." Everyone on the Internet is wrong: when you say "we're better than this" you're implying that we should CHANGE and when you say "this is not who we are" you're saying the OTHER GUY HAS CHANGED AND SHOULD BE SHUNNED.

The basic problem of American democracy is that Republicans have been tugging the Overton Window to the right since Barry Goldwater while the Democrats have been doing their best to leave it where it is. Zero plus any infinitesimal number is not zero. The sensible move for the Democrats is to:

- Make DC a state on the grounds that if DC was a state, they could have called out their own national guard

- Move the inauguration window as close to zero as possible on the grounds that it does nothing but let hijinks ensue

- Pass as permanent a law as possible that says the number of Supreme Court justices must equal the number of regional circuits on the grounds that partisan warfare led to loss of life

- Permanently and federally permit absentee ballots on the grounds that attacking them fomented insurrection

And then if they accomplish that, make Puerto Rico a state, too.

The Republicans have pretty clearly snapped past the Overton Window. 45% of Republicans approve of the siege which means every normal Republican is now dealing with batshit conspiracy theorists on their primaries and the only way they can move forward is to double down on the dumbness or do everything they can to discredit the crazies.

So what happens next is a whole bunch of "this is not who we are" vs. the terrorists as everyone competes to establish the narrative that makes them the normies.