With democracy denied, or at best postponed, the challenge now is to work our way relatively safely through the summer, what with Drumcree, the marching season, tensions at the Catholic/Protestant interfaces and all that.
There is fury from the two parties - Sinn Féin and the DUP - who feel they have suffered most by Mr Tony Blair offering a helping hand to David Trimble and deferring the elections until sometime in the autumn. That is if the current stalemate is broken by then.
That's a big if in the current poisonous atmosphere of anger and recrimination.
The Ulster Unionist Party is obviously relieved at the postponement; the SDLP is expressing annoyance. The smaller parties, as usual, feel they are being submerged in all the squabbling between the heavy hitters.
The hope is that by September or October, people will have settled themselves. Yet some of that venom will slip onto the streets, where grassroots republicans in particular are anxious to vent their rage.
Ordinary republican voices will be heard loudly in west Belfast on Sunday, where they will congregate for a H-Block commemorative rally. Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness will encourage those voices, but not too much.
The Sinn Féin president urged a huge turnout for a protest on May 29th, the date of the non-election. There is much propaganda value to be milked from republicans being disenfranchised, as republicans would have it. This was civil rights all over again, said Mr Adams yesterday.
Such discontent will serve Sinn Féin's cause well. The party was expecting to make huge gains in the Assembly poll, but it is well used to the long game and knows that it could even further exploit this opportunity when the election finally comes.
Yet too much unrest by republicans would not help the cause, which was why Mr McGuinness has called for people to "remain calm and peaceful".
Mr Adams was chiefly blaming Mr Blair for postponing the elections, even though he added that it was to facilitate Mr Trimble. Ordinary republicans, however, while equally happy to accuse Britannia of waiving the rules, will focus their ire on the Ulster Unionist leader.
On the Falls Road yesterday, grassroots republicans were complaining of the British government's "Save Dave" campaign. As Mr Adams said last week, every time Mr Trimble says or does something to annoy nationalists, it means more votes for Sinn Féin. So in Sinn Féin's terms democracy delayed will not really be democracy denied.
Sinn Féin, with justification, is confident it will do very well whenever the elections are called, if they are called. Furthermore, it will allow more time for Sinn Féin to ensure that those supporters who were left off the electoral register to be reregistered.
This debacle poses more serious challenges for the SDLP. Party leader Mr Mark Durkan has acknowledged that a number of seats are under threat from Sinn Féin, but argues that there are other seats up for grabs, to be taken from the smaller parties or unionists. However, there is no doubt that the pressure will be on the party.
Mr Blair postponed the elections because he knew Mr Trimble and the UUP would have been badly, possibly mortally, wounded in the May 29th poll. So yesterday represented a dubious victory of sorts over the DUP.
If elections are called in the autumn, the DUP would predict that it will prove Pyrrhic. The Rev Ian Paisley and Mr Peter Robinson believe that disenfranchising unionists will be Mr Trimble's downfall, and, just as republicans will play the aggrieved victims' card, the DUP principals will do the same.
The Taoiseach was correct when he said this week that the governments and the IRA were within a "whisker" of a deal - they were just a few words short of agreement. Had the IRA in its original statement, or even shortly after, specified the type of activities in which it would no longer engage, then this could have been solved weeks ago.
But because the potential for agreement over these last few weeks was so drawn out, so grudging, so mean-spirited, this "whisker" proved an enormous gap. There was too much dangerous word-play.
Come the autumn, will the IRA be more receptive to providing a statement that doesn't require reference to a dictionary? Who knows what the summer will bring. But elections appear predicated on the IRA delivering a statement which ordinary unionists will understand to mean it is going out of normal business.
If that happens then Mr Trimble at least will have a better chance of resisting the mighty challenge from the DUP. He can argue that it was his pressure which prompted an unequivocal statement from P O'Neill - if such is possible - and that the British and Irish governments stood by him in seeking that extra clarity.
So, the DUP will do well if elections are eventually called, but its success need not necessarily be as dramatic as that of Sinn Féin.
May 29th was the DUP's big opportunity, and irrespective of what it meant to democracy neither Mr Blair nor Mr Ahern were prepared to allow Dr Paisley fully exploit that opportunity.
A few fraught months of political limbo ahead for Northern Ireland. Be sure that sectarianism will raise its ugly head, but if the trend of gradually diminishing summers of violence continues then Northern Ireland just might emerge on the far side of the hot season in some sort of shape to face up to another crack at breaking the deadlock.
