I understand the temptation. Democrats are out of the White House and out of power in Washington. They don’t have a clear leader or a coherent message. The Democratic Party brand is historically unpopular. Democrats don’t control anything. They lost the presidential election to a former president with unprecedented legal trouble who finished ahead in the national popular vote. And yet, this is not the end for the Democratic Party.

How do I know? Well, I’m getting old and I’ve seen this movie before. I’ve been analyzing elections for more than 20 years, and both parties have been declared dead since I’ve been doing this. The bottom line is that parties lose and look completely lost right before they bounce back.

I remember 2004, when Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry lost to President George W. Bush and Republicans expanded their House and Senate majorities. Not only was it the Democrats’ fifth loss in the past seven presidential elections, but the country was mired in Iraq and Bush wasn’t regarded as the sharpest knife in the drawer. Out of power and at risk of being beholden to and identified by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and the political left, there was a feeling of Democratic despair.

But just two years later, in 2006, the Democratic Party came roaring back as voters responded to two more years of Bush. Democrats secured a Senate majority with a gain of six seats and won the House majority as well with a 31-seat gain. Nancy Pelosi became the first woman speaker of the House. Then in 2008, Democrats continued to romp by gaining eight more Senate seats, an additional 20 House seats, and the White House for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

So just four years after the Democratic Party was left for dead, Republicans were suddenly teetering on the brink of irrelevancy. They were out of the White House and out of power in Washington. There was no clear leader of the GOP. Obama had supposedly ushered in a new, postpartisan era with a coalition that would leave Republicans on the outside looking in for years. The GOP was in the wilderness.

But just two years later, in 2010, the Republican Party came roaring back as voters rejected Democrats’ handling of the Affordable Care Act. Republicans gained 63 House seats and reclaimed the majority. They gained six Senate seats (seven, including the Massachusetts special election), though it wasn’t enough to win the majority. Republicans were relevant again.

Although the extinction talk wasn’t quite at the same level as the previous examples, the Democratic Party was put on life support after Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016. And yet Democrats gained 41 House seats two years later and defeated Trump in 2020.

The bottom line is that there’s a cyclical nature to our politics, mainly because the party in power usually learns the wrong lessons from the election. The winners believe the electorate is in love with them rather than voicing their disapproval of the other party. The winning party claims a mandate and goes too far in exerting its power, and then there’s a backlash among voters who decide they want more of the “out” party in office to be a check and balance.