“The winner gets dinner and, my money says, the deep pleasure of never having to say those frightening words: ‘President Gore,’ ” Huffington wrote at the time.

Today, the Huffington-Morris ante seems pulled from an alternate universe, not merely another decade. Almost 20 years later, another Clinton is on the ballot (Hillary), but allegiances are reversed. Morris is working against the presumptive Democratic nominee, advising Republican Donald Trump and bashing Hillary Clinton in his new gig as a National Enquirer columnist. Huffington is editor-in-chief of the left-leaning Huffington Post, which appends this editor’s note to many Trump stories:

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Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

Huffington even claims to be tuned in to the Clinton campaign these days. On MSNBC this week, she shared “what I’m hearing” about the former secretary of state’s possible running mate.

“Something very interesting I heard from two different sources [is] that the campaign is even looking at potentially bringing in a business leader,” Huffington said, countering conventional wisdom about Clinton’s consideration of politicians such as Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

The 2016 presidential campaign often feels like a flashback to the 1990s — largely because it is only natural, as Hillary Clinton seeks her husband’s old job, to review policies and events from the last time she occupied the White House. For her, the time warp involves touting the economic prosperity much of the country enjoyed during that period but also rehashing Bill Clinton’s infidelity and impeachment. For Trump, it means boasting about business successes while trying to reconcile his current conservatism (“I’m pro-life”) with previous, liberal positions (“I am very pro-choice”).

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And for some in the media, revisiting the ’90s is like conjuring a past life. Huffington and Morris, after all, are not the only ones in dramatically different roles from the ones they occupied when Hillary Clinton was first lady.

As a conservative writer for American Spectator, David Brock authored an explosive 1993 report on “Troopergate,” featuring claims by Arkansas state troopers who said they aided Bill Clinton’s philandering — specifically with a woman named Paula — when he was governor of their state. A 1998 Washington Post article about Brock explained the domino effect of his story.

That prompted Paula Jones to file her lawsuit against Clinton. And it was in a deposition in the Jones case that Clinton denied having sex with [Monica] Lewinsky, sparking the current allegations of perjury.

That guy — the guy who was kinda, sorta indirectly responsible for Bill Clinton’s impeachment — now runs a liberal press watchdog group, Media Matters for America, and a pro-Hillary super PAC called Correct the Record.

George Stephanopoulos hasn’t switched sides as have Huffington, Morris and Brock, but the former senior policy adviser and communications director to Bill Clinton is now the chief anchor at ABC News — a job that at times involves prodding Hillary Clinton with tough questions.

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Last month, for instance, Stephanopoulos asked Clinton the following: “Do you believe that an individual’s right to bear arms is a constitutional right — that it’s not linked to service in a militia?” When Clinton offered a non-answer about the government’s right to “impose reasonable regulations,” Stephanopoulos refused to let her off the hook.

“That’s not what I asked,” he said. “I said, ‘Do you believe ... that the right to bear arms is a constitutional right?’ ”

“If it is a constitutional right, then it — like every other constitutional right — is subject to reasonable regulations,” Clinton replied.

Not everything is backward, of course. Matt Drudge, who broke the Lewinsky story in 1998, is still a top Clinton antagonist.

But even that dynamic hasn’t been consistent throughout the past 20 years. When Hillary Clinton ran for president the first time, Drudge appeared to have become an admirer, as New York magazine reported in August 2007.

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The one person Drudge seems to believe can lead is Hillary Clinton. Though Drudge often savages Hillary, he is convinced that she will make history, and he seems determined, in spite of himself, to empower her. HILLARY ON SURGE? “IT’S WORKING” was a recent lead headline. The Clinton scandals of yesteryear bore him, Drudge has said. Right-wing fans have begun to complain about the pattern, calling him “Hillary-obsessed.” What an irony that the gossip who almost destroyed Bill Clinton’s presidency might propel his wife to the Oval Office. “That House is going pink,” says Drudge.

Two months later, the New York Times reported that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had even begun leaking information to Drudge. Today, with Drudge cheering Trump, that’s hard to imagine.

What’s behind these wild swings? Morris says he became disenchanted by Clinton “when it became clear that she was hiring detectives to intimidate and blackmail the women who Bill was involved with.” That’s a charge the old Brock might have run with, but the new Brock’s Media Matters group has tried to discredit what it calls “Dick Morris’s implausible Hillary Clinton ‘blackmail’ scandal.”

As I said, we’re living in an alternate universe.

Huffington wrote about her political conversion in her 2008 book, “Right is Wrong,” saying she was “seduced, fooled, blinded, bamboozled” by conservatism — particularly small-government principles.

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In this election, Huffington hasn’t so much fallen in love with Hillary Clinton as concluded that the woman she described in 1998 as “the primary enabler of her husband’s sexual addiction” is now the nation’s primary salvation from “those frightening words”: President Trump.

“I think what is even more important is for everybody who is going to vote to realize that whether they like Hillary Clinton or not, whether they like her email server, or her suits, or the fact that she didn’t leave her husband, she is the one and only thing standing between the United States and the existential threat of a Donald Trump presidency,” Huffington said in her MSNBC appearance this week. “You don’t have to like Hillary Clinton to vote for Hillary Clinton. This is your only chance to stop Donald Trump.”