The more I think about it, the Democratic takeover should've been easy to see as early as 2002
The Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, and impeachment was on their brains not long afterward. After retiring from Congress in 2005, Republican Congressman Henry Hyde, one of the leading lights of the impeachment movement, was asked whether the Clinton Impeachment was retaliation for Nixon decades earlier.
"I can't say it wasn't," Hyde said. "But I also thought that the Republican party should stand for something, and if we walked away from this, no matter how difficult, we could be accused of shirking our duty, our responsibility."
Of course, Hyde's bit about "standing for something" is made ridiculous in light of the timeline of impeachment. Republicans were convinced of impeachment, and then went about looking for something to pin it on. For six years, they hounded and flogged Clinton, until he finally left office in 2000, enjoying approval ratings far higher than those of Congress.
Then came 2000 to the present day -- The Rove Years. Rove's basic election strategy, embraced by Republicans and derided by Democrats, was to get out the Republican vote and appeal to the conservative base, damn the mushy middle that, for the most part, didn't vote anyway. It was a good short-term route, but disastrous in the long-term.
Karl Rove, who will go down in history as a short-sighted, so-so campaigner
In the first six years in office, the Republicans in Congress ostracized Democrats with their witch hunts of Clinton, burning all bridges and ruining chances of reconcilitation, in some part because they were still smarting from the fact that their leader was caught committing multiple felonies 20 years earlier. This pattern of shooting the messenger -- of being angry at those who report atrocities, rather than those who commit them -- has become a hallmark of Republican thought (e.g. Why can't you all report the good news coming out of Iraq?).
Then, in the next six years, the Republicans ignored independent voters while whipping up the base into a frothy-mouthed, rabid group of Igors who looked at voting not as a democratic right, but as a necessity mandated by God. In other words, they spent 12 years completely ignoring the center, where most American voters lie.
Many election watchers have seen the midterm election as the independent moderates being fed up with the rightward direction of the GOP, and acting on that. Despite some gains by liberals in the Northeast, this is true for the most part. White evangelical Christians went out to vote in similar numbers, voted in similar ways, and their candidates got trounced.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the last decent Republican president, once wrote to his brother, "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are ... a few ... Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
Of course, those people are now the heart and soul of the Republican Party. The Democrats now control a center-left coalition, the sort of group that generally enjoys majorities in most industrialized Western nations.
A more-modern Republican, greedhead monster Grover Norquist, said of the Democrats after the 2004 presidential election, "Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such."
Grover Norquist, whose testes are shrinking by the minute
If the Democrats can hold together this center-left coalition, leaving only would-be Nazis like Norquist and crazed Jesus freaks like Rev. James Dobson and fellow Colorado Springs resident Ted Haggard as their base, the party need not worry about minority status for another 40 or 50 years, if then -- particularly once the next census comes around and Democrat-controlled state houses can rewrite districts that have been gerrymandered in favor of Republicans.
As for pissing on Grover Norquist's furniture, if his heart was on fire, I wouldn't piss down his throat to save his life. Even my urine is worth more than that.