Coming off Kennedy/Johnson the DNC lost 2 landslide presidential elections in row. Carter missed a second term, with 3 more landslides in a row. And Carter was considered almost as much of a joke as Ford until surprisingly recently.
During the same time they lost a shit ton of control in the states and their margin in congress steadily fell. And what’s more important than that is who was maintaining or winning seats where they were won. And like Clinton they were center right and blue dogs. The fact that Clinton even won his primary was a bit of a shock at the time, and that was very much the “New Face” of the Democratic Party at the time after widespread fear that the Democrats had lost the ability to win national elections or control the senate because they were out of touch with the nation as a whole.
One of the big wow facts coming out of the midterms was the DNC won its largest representation in State governments since the Carter administration.
Point being they saw a good lot more success at the time, and even through the 00’s than they were seeing before the rise of the center right.
MEANWHILE. Its not like the party sat there and said “hey lets tack right, over the course of 32 years!”. What happened is different more conservative politicians were elected as part of that party. And eventually rose to be central to that party. What they gained was that they had any representation at all outside of coastal cities. Your older batch of mid century liberals faded out, as they were replaced with politicians from a more conservative generation, elected by a more conservative electorate.
You can go check the tracking polls on religiosity, political alignment. Support on particular issue. Look at how rapidly public opinion changed on gay marriage.
Like I said there was a nation wide, general population, shift to the conservative. Starting in the 70’s. Accelerating in the 80’s, and peaking in the 90’s. It wasn’t just a momentary shift right for opportunity’s sake by the national DNC for a single election. The right went further right. And the left all but disappeared. Check the link I put up, in 1992 only 25% of Democrats identified as liberal. The gen pop it looks like something like 17%. And that’s after the parties resorted through Nixon and Reagan to pull segregationist, Southern Democrats into the GOP.
All I’m saying is the party didn’t shift right at odds with the population. They followed the country rightward.
Left wing identification has been moving upwards, steadily since the 90’s. As has support for a whole host of progressive policies. And its been accelerating the last 10 years. And its pretty much in lock step with what proportion of the electorate is still from those older generations that drove that rightward shift
