Until recently, the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency seemed like an eerie mirror-image reflection of Barack Obama’s first year in office.

The election of a president who represented a radical departure from the status quo instantly reinvigorated the formerly moribund opposition. Energized activists descended on town halls, marched on Washington, organized at the grassroots level, and won elections—including a shocker of a Senate race in a state where they had no right being competitive. This energy has so intoxicated Democrats in Congress that they’ve marched vigorously down some legislative cul-de-sacs, which included holding the debt ceiling hostage and shutting down the government over a non-budgetary matter. These tactical errors were dismissed as meaningless in the long run. After all, we’d seen this movie before.

All that was missing from this analogy was an unpopular legislative achievement to hang around the governing party’s neck. Democrats seemed to have secured that last piece of the puzzle in the form of December’s tax-code reform bill. It was a bill passed by the Senate in a pre-dawn Saturday morning vote. There were no public hearings on the matter. It was a partisan bill crafted behind closed doors. It was riddled with carve-outs, giveaways, and loopholes that would explode the deficit. It was a Christmas gift to the wealthy that raised taxes on some middle-class taxpayers.

At least, that was how Democrats attacked this legislation. The response from Republicans to this challenge was virtual silence; they were busy crafting the bill, which is as much an exercise in good governance as it is in minimizing defections, and that often means keeping quiet amid private negotiations. Rather than sell the public on the merits of the bill, the president, too, stayed silent. The result of this dynamic was legislation that polled in the twenties. The public had fully bought the Democratic line.

Then something remarkable happened: the bill began to speak for itself.

In anticipation of the effects that the new tax law would have on their bottom lines and in response to an increasingly tight labor market, businesses large and small began reinvesting in their employees and the economy. First, a handful of firms announced substantial one-time bonuses for their employees. That handful soon became a cascade, and the number of beneficiaries surged into the millions.

The benefits didn’t end there. Some firms began providing their employees with increases in the funds they would match for their 401(k) plans. Major employers like Walmart and Wells Fargo announced minimum-wage hikes for their part-time employees—an outcome Democrats have long said was desirable but only achievable through coercion by the state.

Manufacturers that had off-shored production began announcing plans to repatriate that activity into the United States. Energy and telecom firms, which require long-term stability and massive infrastructure investments to draw a profit, announced capital investments in the billions. And much of this occurred before Americans saw the withholding amounts in their paychecks decrease by a few percentage points—a modest reminder that 2018’s income tax filing will hurt a little bit less than 2017’s.

None of this was supposed to happen; not according to Democrats, anyway. On the eve of the bill’s passage, polls showed that attacks on tax-code reform were working. In one survey, a majority said they thought their tax burden would increase as a result of this law. Why wouldn’t they?  Democrats had repeatedly and falsely said as much. Other polls suggested that a majority believed that the benefits of this bill would go to the wealthy. Indeed, this preconception was supported by research contending that executives, managers, and shareholders would be the primary—though not exclusive—beneficiaries of the law.

That kind of circumspection was not a feature of overwrought Democratic attacks on the law. Nancy Pelosi invoked Viking hordes when she called the law a “plundering” and a “pillaging of the middle class.” Elizabeth Warren claimed the law was a “corruption” that “is hollowing out America’s middle class” and “tearing down our democracy.” It’s “a brazen move to rig our political system and our economy,” Jeff Merkley declared. “Crumbs,” said Richard Blumenthal of this “malicious, malign” bill. “Disgusting, disgusting outcome for millions of Americans who will suffer under this bill,” was all Mazie Hirono could muster.

Democrats have long known that the corporate tax code was an obstacle to economic activity. That’s why Barack Obama complained that “our current corporate tax system is outdated, unfair, and inefficient” in 2012. They knew—or, at least, they should have known—that injecting as much capital into the economy as corporate tax-code reform did would have positive knock-on effects. If anything, Democrats should have warned that creating incentives to this much economic activity amid almost full employment and near 3 percent GDP growth risks overheating the economy, which would result in inflation and spiking prices. Instead, they theatrically tore at their garments in disgust, setting their credibility on fire in the process.

Today, according to a poll conducted for the New York Times, a majority—51 percent—support the GOP’s tax code law, up from just 37 percent when it was passed. The great irony in all this is that it was the Democratic Party—not Republicans—who so successfully sold this bill. By setting expectations that could not be met, Democrats created the conditions by which the law could be seen as a success. Tax-code reform will not be the GOP’s ObamaCare.

Some on the right expect tax code to redound to the GOP’s benefit in November, but the economy had been performing on all cylinders before this law’s passage and without many indications that the governing party would get the credit. The GOP’s position in the polls has recovered since December, but this is a relative condition. What looked like an imminent extinction-level event that would cleanse the landscape of Republicans now appears to be a run-of-the-mill tsunami. If that holds, the 2018 election will not be a referendum on the economy, but values—both those of the president and the party he is transforming—and, on that score, the Republican Party will take the hit they deserve.

And yet, this episode is an indication that Democratic imprudence can still steal defeat from the jaws of victory. Moreover, if the GOP endures a wipeout, it can trade on the tax-code bill and the trust the party gained from a successful legislative reform that was flagrantly mischaracterized by its opponents. That will be a strong argument in favor Republican governance ahead of 2020. They’re going to need it.