As Republican senators agonised over their next steps in the President Clinton impeachment process yesterday, it was easy to overlook one of the most remarkable outcomes of the crisis.
The longer the crisis has continued, the more unified the Democratic Party has become. In contrast to the Republicans, who have been increasingly torn about how to proceed, the Democrats have moved from early disunity to an unaccustomed state bordering on unanimity.
Only a few months ago Democratic condemnation of Mr Clinton was frequent. The intentions of the President's Senate critics - not least of the party's Senate leader, Mr Tom Daschle - were uncertain. There was palpable mistrust of a president who had made almost a virtue of running against his party.
In retrospect, it is clear that the primary effect, and possibly the primary intention, of the Clinton defence team in the Senate last week was to unify the 45 Democrats around a common belief that the trial should be dismissed.
The team's legal skills and the populist oratory of the former Democratic senator Mr Dale Bumpers achieved something which took the party by surprise.
The coming together of the Democrats was all the more remarkable in the light of earlier criticisms from party elders that Mr Clinton's defence was too legalistic.
The climactic moment of the party's internal convergence came on Friday, when the veteran Democratic senator Mr Robert Byrd announced he would move the trial dismissal motion that was expected to be debated yesterday. Mr Byrd's jealously guarded reputation as the Senate's procedural oracle and independent-minded critic of Mr Clinton gave his announcement the power to shock observers of both parties.
"A surprise to everybody," Senator Joseph Lieberman called it. But if Mr Byrd was on board, then the 45 Democrats were on board, too.
The importance of Mr Byrd's announcement was underscored on Sunday when Mr Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, normally considered the most anti-Clinton Democrat in the Senate, made a rare trip to the television studios to announce that he, too, was determined to vote for dismissal.
Just a few months ago Mr Hollings was at the top of every list of possible Democratic defectors from the President's cause. In the search for the possible "12 angry Democrats" who might be sufficiently alienated to join the 55 Republicans to oust Mr Clinton, Mr Byrd's and Mr Hollings's names were regularly dropped.
In the event, neither they nor any of their colleagues have done so. The Democrats have managed to have the best of both worlds, placing themselves on the side of the voters by wanting to end the process, while enjoying the spectacle of the Republicans struggling to keep it going.
Most of all, by committing their 45 votes against convicting Mr Clinton, they have guaranteed the President's own survival and emerged all but unscathed from a long crisis which threatens to devastate their opponents.