This may be the ideal result TBH. Had she outright won there would have been an earthquake. Now they can hide behind a lot of excuses, call this an off-year outlier, and keep ignoring the obvious lessons.
I did see that a 14-point uniform swing next year would gain the Democrats 50 House seats and 6 Senate seats. I do not expect anything close to that, but can you see the economy getting any better under this administration's policies?
And as you noted, netting 14 points would also breach the wall where gerrymanders start to turn into dummymanders.