In each of these cases, I suspect that the party wouldn’t have to move that far or compromise that much to end up in a stronger political position. A centrist crime-control agenda to pair with sentencing reform, a more incremental, Dream Act-ish approach to immigration, a stress on the most pro-work elements in the party’s arsenal of welfare policies, a mild softening of the party’s secularism and complete-the-sexual-revolution zeal … with the right leadership and salesmanship, these moves might reassure and win over a crucial fraction of the many voters, blue-collar and white-collar, male and female, who pulled the lever very reluctantly for Trump.

But these shifts would require asking both identitarian and populist liberals (and the many-if-not-most liberals who identify with both strands) to compromise some of their commitments, to accept that open borders and desexed bathrooms and a guaranteed income and mass refugee resettlement will remain somewhat-radical causes rather than simply and naturally becoming the Democratic Party line.

This is a hard ask, since even modest shifts require compromising deeply held (if, in some cases, recently discovered) ideals. And it’s made much harder by the fact that liberals spent the last four years telling themselves that such compromises were not necessary anymore, that they belonged to the benighted 1990s and need trouble liberal consciences no more.

But that was a lie. And harder truths are what the buckling Democratic Party needs now.