For 30 years, Democrats were at the mercy of GOP demonization. Even when dems didn't literally faint and cower in a corner, whimpering, whenever repugs called them liberals, the effect was the same.
Democrats lost the White House, the Senate, the House, the states to repugs who couldn't recognize a Constitutional principle or articulate a rational policy to save their lives.
Even Bill Clinton survived only because he pacified the repugs by sacrificing the middle class to the piranhas of Wall Street.
Yes, Barack Obama was a once-in-a-century candidate, but the repugs are caught in feedback loop of self-destruction because they finally took demonization too far.