Will any Democrats be defecting to the Liberals? I can see OTLs New Democrats fitting in well there.
The thing is, the Democrats have two safeguards against this.
1. The states New Democrats tend to reside in are not states that the Liberals do well in. People who flip only do so if they’re pissed and if they think they can win. Mathias won in Vermont, so Jeffords felt confident. That sort of thing. Meanwhile you have a deeply southern DLC, and the south tends to be actively hostile to the Libs - they’re the old type of eastern Republican, the ones the South would literally never vote for. You’re not going to see Al Gore lining up to jump out of the Democratic Party.
2. The Democratic leadership has time to prepare for this. They saw the Republican revolt, and they’re not anxious to repeat this for themselves, so they’re doing basically all they can to prevent it. In this case, you have leadership members reaching out to independently-minded centrist Democrats and keeping them onboard and the Liberal bloc themselves to try and keep them to focus on their Republican counterparts.
However, you may see OTL Democrats running for office AS Liberals. See Lanny Davis, who ran for the House district he represents as a Liberal ITTL as a Democrat in 1976.
Sad to see any the DFL shall fall
On the contrary! MN isn’t going anywhere, and the lack of a “DFL Massacre” totally changes the perception of the party and the attitude of its leadership. Not giving anyway any other details of this yet, though.