Four years ago in the New York Times:

The Democratic Party emerged from this week’s election struggling over what it stood for, anxious about its political future, and bewildered about how to compete with a Republican Party that some Democrats say may be headed for a period of electoral dominance.

Democrats said President Bush’s defeat of Senator John Kerry by three million votes had left the party facing its most difficult time in at least 20 years. Some Democrats said the situation was particularly worrisome because of the absence of any compelling Democratic leader prepared to steer the party back to power or carry its banner in 2008. …

At this very early date, party officials said Hillary Rodham Clinton, the New York senator, is best positioned to win the presidential nomination. But Democrats and some Republicans said Mrs. Clinton was open to caricature by Republicans as the type of candidate that this election suggested was so damaging to the Democratic Party: a Northeastern, secular liberal.

In addition to Mrs. Clinton, two Democrats from this year — Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who was Mr. Kerry’s running mate, and Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor — are likely to move to wield influence, and perhaps run for president themselves.

Both men are burdened by their own losses this year. And in one disadvantage for Mr. Edwards, several party officials said there would likely be renewed hesitancy to run a member of Congress for the presidency, given the success the White House had undercutting Mr. Kerry’s credibility with votes he had cast.

This also appeared in the Times — a few days earlier.

It’s amazing what can happen in just four years.