As George Packer writes in the New Yorker this week:

The midterm elections are the last obstacle to Trump’s consolidation of power—and the greatest obstacle to voting is the feeling that it doesn’t matter.
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None of the other forces that might have checked the rise of a corrupt homegrown oligarchy can stop or even slow it. The institutional clout that ended the Presidency of Richard Nixon no longer exists.
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And, when the independent counsel finally releases his report, it will have only the potency that the guardians of the law and the Constitution give it.
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Democrats have a habit of forgetting to vote between Presidential elections. Republican turnout has exceeded or equalled Democratic turnout in every midterm since 1978, no matter which party held the Presidency, with an average margin of three per cent—more than enough to decide control of Congress in a closely divided election.
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This year, something seems to be changing. The new faces among Democratic candidates, the new energy behind them, suggest a party of members, not squatters. But, come November, they will have to vote. It’s the only thing left. ♦