I mean Trump's flouting of institutional norms has lain bare the fact that it doesn't matter if a guy smiles at you and uses lube if you don't want to be a bottom. Through his casual disregard of certain norms, he's exposed past failures to formally codify and limit power. These failures demonstrate how liberals talked about them and did little, mostly just offering empty rhetoric. Both the GOP and the Dems have been unabashed corporatists for their lifespan, but Trump just doesn't mince words about it whereas Dems often lull people with rhetorical gestures while still pursuing pro-corporatist policies. When Dems are in power you generally have to negotiate with them in incremental stages through their chosen institutions, but Republicans, and especially populists like Trump, arouse activists and lobbyists both for and against. That means the situation becomes ripe for both radical and reactionary politics to dominate the discourse. Bernie's ability to build a following is a function of harnessing that discourse and mapping it onto real circumstances in many people's everyday life. After his campaign ended, DSA saw a flood of sign-ups, though I'm still somewhat skeptical if that's the organization that will ever achieve electoral success, but I do like a lot of the work they're doing in local communities.
Now because there's a crisis, it matters a little less who's president for the purposes of movement building. There are plenty of people who will have motivations to directly address the state. It only matters at this point for technocratic reasons. The die is cast for the politics.
