The party was in trouble.  They couldn't understand it.  Hadn't they, in their beginnings, held the country together and unified it?  Wasn't their first President destined to go down in history as one of the greatest in American history?  How soon the voters forget.

They'd elected the President four years earlier, a member of a prominent American political family that included two Presidents, a Vice-President - who later went on to be President - members of Congress, Cabinet Members, and holders of other official positions. 

But he'd been a disaster.  He'd been rightfully attacked for trying to subvert fundamental liberties guaranteed in the Constitution, he'd been criticized for his absurd over-inflation of the ceremonial aspects of the Presidency.  And his party had bled votes profusely in the cities because of their anti-immigrant stand and for its support of policies aimed at benefitting the rich.

      The mid-term elections had showed the country turning to the Democrats, and now one of them was President, and he'd brought with him a large majority in Congress.  He'd won, despite the Party's attacks on his 'attachment to America,' his religious beliefs, his patriotism.  He'd even been known to hang around with people who'd been revolutionaries in the near past.

And the new President had started by overruling some of his predecessor's decisions, and the country seemed to love him for it.  What were they going to do?  And what was worse, the new President had been very conciliatory to the Party, even appointing members to high positions, stressing that the Party was part of America too, and should be given a chance to contribute - not conducting the retribution the Party had expected.  And there were even Party members drifting to the Democrats.

      What was worse, they'd become a regional party, stuck in one corner of the country, with some support only in the area bordering it.  The party had become, to a strong extent, the captive of the Preachers whose support they had once welcomed.  And the Preachers were spreading the most absurd conspiracy theories, and some of their extremists in Congress were repeating them.

      Those extremists had become the voice of the party.  The voters had rejected the moderates - whose influence had been almost nil - preferring Democrats to the 'well, okay, he's almost a Democrat, more or less' moderate.  The voters who had stuck by the party were the diehards, fanatical and willing to follow the Preachers and nay-sayers, and to vote their like into office.

      So worried the leaders of the Federalist Party, as they desperately struggled, vainly, to remain relevant and finally to even remain in existence.

      (I was so tempted to mention that their last two candidates were both New Yorkers, a renegade Democrat named Clinton and a long-time Congressman named King - actually a Senator.  But I don't think the parallel will quite go that far.)