One party blows everything up. The other gets elected to fix it. That turns out to take longer than 2-4 years, especially with opposition and a thin margin in House and Senate, so the party that broke things campaigns on how bad things are now (due to their own actions).
On a year to year basis it’s difficult to see. But look over decades: this is a party that not only failed to advance anything building on the New Deal, but failed at every step to arrest its complete demolition.
If you really believe that the reason the dems can’t accomplish anything is because of Manchin, Sinema, The Parliamentarian, or $WEEKLY_SCAPEGOAT_NAME, I’m sorry to say you’re a mark. It’s like that Key & Peele “hold me back” skit.
As are the Pubs. Ex. they left the ACA in place.
I'll take that over the GOP wanting me, at best, crushed under a boot and subservient, but I'll still vote for just about any candidate the DSA puts up locally if they ever do. I recognize the barrier function of voting for whatever barely animate ghoul the DNC triangulates on in the primary, so I'll do that until someone figures out how to get > 50% at that level with someone I'll vote for rather than a lineholder.
The DNC's marriage track record as far as I know was the same as the RNC, the only difference is who was celebrating when the supreme court made the decision.
That's a good example of why people who think the Democratic Party is a vehicle for progressivism are wrong. In 2008, Black people--without whom Democrats would not be a viable national party--said homosexuality was morally unacceptable by more than 2:1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/112807/blacks-conservative-repu.... They were as conservative on that issue as Republicans. (Even as of 2019, 45% of Black Democrats think legalizing same-sex marriage was a bad thing, compared to just 11% of white Democrats. That puts them closer to Republicans (57%) than to the white members of their party. Hispanic Democrats are also twice as likely as white Democrats to say it was a bad thing, while Hispanics overall are three times as likely. See: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/12/17/5-gender-fam...)
The Democratic Party is a coalition of white social liberals, who are either moderate or progressive economically, along with people of color who vary significantly in political ideology. A significant chunk of the voters who put the party over the top in places like Georgia and Arizona are the old Reagan coalition: upwardly mobile suburbanites of all races.
Those are all Democrats. If those Democrats aren't the reason, who is?
> It’s like that Key & Peele “hold me back” skit.
You think some of the Dem Senators would vote differently if it weren't for the opposition? Maybe so. When everyone knows a vote will go one way, you can never tell whether people are "sincere" voters.
Still, it can't be that 49 out of 50 Senate Dems are all against the mild social democratic reforms being rejected by the 50th.
The "ratchet effect" arises from the fact that the United States is a moderate country. If you look at the House popular vote over the last 20 years, Republicans have won it as often as Democrats. The House popular vote is a good metric to look at because it isn't affected by gerrymandering, and Republicans have an incentive to contest every single House seat (unlike with the Presidential popular vote, where Republicans have zero incentive to schlep all over rural California, New York, Illinois, etc., scrounging up votes).
Even within the Democratic Party itself, Biden decisively won the nomination. It's wasn't because of "electability." It's because the party is entirely dependent on minorities to be a viable national party, and American racial politics means that minorities often vote Democrat even if they are moderate to conservative. My parents are the "brown people" who turned Virginia blue. They liked Biden and disliked Warren. Not because of "electability" but because they're economically moderate and socially conservative, but as immigrants from a Muslim country they don't like Trump's rhetoric. That's the Democratic coalition, and progressives need to come to terms with that.
Each cycle, both parties make red-to-blue and blue-to-red lists of districts to flip, and allocate money disproportionately to them.
Even setting aside top-down party decisions, which clearly happen, seats aren't contested seriously for knock-on reasons: the best candidates won't run for hopeless seats, because the loss taints them and opens them up to carpetbagging charges when they try to contest other districts.
I don't think I disagree with your whole analysis, but the argument that "Republicans have an incentive to contest every single House seat" clearly doesn't hold.
Obviously political preferences over entire populations can’t be reduced to single issues. Still, I’m guessing the negative impacts of the pandemic have made a major impact. IMO they have a lot of people thinking “why didn’t you handle this better?” (with widely differing views on what constitutes “better”), and thus resenting the government, even if there’s really no silver bullet for handling something awful like a pandemic.
We've got things pretty good in the US. It's why people are trying to sneak across the border in droves-- everybody recognizes the economic opportunities.
It's true that the pendulum swings back and forth. The Democrats control things (as they do now), they make some changes to fulfill campaign promises and they over-reach in a few spots. People always want something better, so they soon vote for Republicans. Who pass things they campaigned on, roll back some Democrat over-reaches, and do a little over-reaching themselves. Then the Democrats come back into power.....
The system works. Along the way, we get social changes like gay marriage, maybe some long overdue restrictions on late-term abortions, etc. Society slowly moves forward.
I just wish there wasn't as much demonization and pot-stirring along the way. There's really no need to throw hate at people actross the aisle, because without them your party would soon run amuck and ruin everything. The system works.
The Democrats had a razor-thin majority in both House and Senate, but they tried to govern like they had a large majority. That... didn't work. And it led to people comparing what they promised (or at least tried to do) with what they delivered. From that perspective, the Democrats failed miserably.
That leads to a lot of disillusioned voters.
I don't know why the Democrats chose this route, but it was a spectacular, predictable failure. Especially, Biden should have known better. He spent a lot of years in the Senate; he should have known what couldn't be done with a 50-50 split.