I'm convinced that a large section of the Democratic establishment doesn't actually WANT to win elections, or get anything done if they do. It looks to me as if many of them like it that the party just barely scrapes in to the White House and small Congressional majorities after a long stint in powerless opposition, then loses Congress after two years and the White House after six...which gives them eight years to do endlessly fundraise on emergency/crisis/"Stop THEM! Stop THEM! Stop THEM!" politics- politics that never involves rebuilding the party at a grassroots level, or putting together a real program of change, or trying to win solid, realigning victories. It's telling that the beginning of the right-wing electoral backlash was caused by Terry McAuliffe, the ultimate corporate Dem, losing- and I'm convinced he did this delibarately- the Virginia governor's race, which he should have been able to win in a walk- by responding to parents raising concerns about schools with the arrogant, dismissive statement that what they wanted didn't matter. Nobody can EVER win an election by talking to voters like that and if he'd wanted to win he'd never have said that.

This was in a discussion about the myth that "Critical Race Theory" was being taught in grade schools, which we all know was not the case, but rather than simply making it clear that that wasn't happening, he told those people, basically, to fuck off and die.

The right took things like that and ran with them- and it seems pretty clear that people like McAuliffe- a man who still wants the Dems to go back to the Bill Clinton policies which nearly killed the Dems at every level below the presidency- would want to cause a situation like we are in now. He thinks the 1994-2000 and 2010-2016 eras were "the good old days".