The irony is that today’s GOP looks a lot like the Democratic party of the 1990s. Before Bill Clinton, the Democrats had lost five out of six presidential elections — and its 1988 nominee had spent the election running away from the liberal label. Within two years of Clinton’s election, Democrats would lose control of Congress, including — especially shockingly — the party’s 40-year majority in the House of Representatives. The party had been bleeding white Southerners and Northern ancestrally Democratic white voters for decades at the presidential level and now those voters were supporting Republican candidates for Congress and governor.

The result was that this scared and desperate party took what it could get. Even the most liberal Democrats supported a criminal president who signed a capital-gains-tax cut and said that the era of big government was over. The party split down the middle on (and Clinton signed) the GOP’s welfare-reform legislation. The leaders of the Democratic party decided it had been a mistake to oppose Reagan’s military buildup and George Bush’s Gulf War — this was the background to Hillary Clinton’s, Joe Biden’s, and John Kerry’s votes in favor of the Iraq War. This party was glad to have all the pro-coal gun enthusiasts it could get. The Democrats knew that there weren’t enough liberals to win.

The Democrats now are — in some ways — similar to conservatives in the days right after Reagan’s presidency. Democrats are confident that, given electioneering competence and just a little luck, they have a majority within their grasp.