The coalition, known as liberalism, falls apart as each group within it turns on another and the true colors each emerges. The glue that held them together begins to breakdown and they each other like wild savages as the very differences they used to celebrate begin to break down.
In the end there was never any real glue, only fantasy as they look for someone else to blame and the long knives come out.
The exact same thing happened during the Carter years. R. Emmett Tyrrell wrote a brilliantly witty book on that collapse of the Liberal coalition.