IMAGINE THAT RIP VAN WINKLE was a Democrat–one waking up from an 18-year slumber.

As Rip nodded off in the summer of 1987, his party was mobilizing to take down a conservative Supreme Court nominee. Rip’s fellow Dems needed the win: They’d lost two national elections during the decade to a president they were convinced was a lunkhead; opinions differed over whether the party needed to chart a more moderate course. But Rip remembered that help was on the way in the form of New York’s most glamorous Democrat (Mario Cuomo), who was the odds-on-favorite to be the next president. Not much has changed.