The unexpected transition from a Washington defined by Republican opposition to President Barack Obama to a Washington in which the Republican Party is the sole shaper of the national agenda has served as a kind of natural experiment for identifying root sources of political dysfunction.

The through-line connecting the Obama and Trump eras is a presumption that only Republicans are entitled to maximal demonstrations of power. Norms are meant to constrict Democrats; rules are for them to follow. This double standard creates a number of jarring discontinuities, the most abrupt of which was an overnight whipsaw from the indiscriminate denial of Obama’s power to fill a Supreme Court vacancy to the scowling demand that President Donald Trump’s nominee receive a fair hearing.

But Supreme Court vacancies are relatively rare, and vacancies in the final year of a president’s second term are even more so. The most consequential upending of precedent lies in the contrast between how Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act and how Republicans are attempting to repeal it.

It isn’t too hard to imagine the give-and-take between the parties over Supreme Court vacancies returning to some kind of balanced order. Republicans, by contrast, are kidding themselves if they think the ACA-repeal rush job they’re trying to perpetrate won’t become a model Democrats use when they’re ultimately empowered to fix what the GOP is trying to break. Democrats remain committed to establishing a national health care guarantee in the United States; what will change if Republicans roll back that guarantee isn’t liberal principles, but Democrats’ concern for achieving liberal goals through normal means.

Amid the tortuous process that ended with Obamacare’s enactment, Republicans complained that Democrats were “ramming” or “jamming” health care reform down people’s throats, and they have never stopped complaining. Their procedural objections centered around mostly mythical midnight votes, and the Democrats’ belated adoption of a process called budget reconciliation to secure the law’s passage in spite of a GOP filibuster.