The point is that somewhere between 2006 and 2009, Bill Clinton’s formerly competitive Democratic party aged and then evaporated. It was replaced by a hard-left coastal coalition, a pyramidal party — ethnic-identity groups at the base and wealthy elites on top, all united by a mutual disdain for the half of the population that covers 85 percent of the geography.

What followed were universities, Hollywood, the media, and the wealthy damning supposed “white privilege” (a phrase rarely spoken outside of university ethnic-studies departments prior to 2009), as those who did not have privilege were damned by those who most certainly did.

So the Democrats logically grew hysterical over Trump because they had few choices other than a rescue through a Watergate-like crisis.

Democrats forgot the unprecedented conditions that brought a hard-left icon such as Barack Obama into power in 2009: an orphaned election without a run by an incumbent president or vice president, the largest fund-raising in presidential history, unprecedented media bias, the anger over the Iraq War, the panic over the September 2008 Wall Street meltdown, the novelty of the first African-American president, the weakness of the McCain candidacy, and the media demonization of incumbent George Bush.