<< There is no fixing this mess through an appeal to "centrism" or "status quo".
I personally do not think it can be fixed in its current form, which is primarily why I argue to maintain what we do have.
<< Bernie has been kind of successful in his "oligarchy tour", redirecting the anger of Americans from minorites and unto the billionaires, which largely contribute to this country's actual issues for one.
I give him credit. He made those policies 'cool' among young people. Were it not for his age, he would have been a real threat to the existing power centers.
<< For better or worse, I believe the only solution is for an hypothetical economically progressive party to "play dirty", that is to say employ a form of "left-wing populism".
Eh, best I can say is that whatever they are doing now is definitely not working well. We might be in disagreement about the way, but I would not mind being on the 'winning side' for once.
<< In truth, the democrats are socially very mild compared to actually progressive parties around the world. Blaming their mild social policies instead of the massive campaigns of disinformation that made them pass for extremists is ludicrous. Here: I'll posit that if the democrats actually fixed the country through more corporate taxes, socialized universal healthcare, free university and such, we'd have heard none of Trump. Without them ever needing to abandon their social policies.
I do not think you are wrong about any of this, but it is impossible to say for sure one way or another.
<< They believe the neoliberal party that holds mildy rainbow-capitalist social views is actually a "degenerate trans gang" out to trans their kids or whatever.
The interesting part here is that the democrat party was partly forced to consider changing their stances a little as a result of that propaganda. The internal party conversation still seems to be ongoing, but the impact has been clear ( calls to 'not focus' on minorities that are too small to matter and too, whats a good word, visible to the general population ).
<< IMO, this is an extremely shallow understanding of politics and ignores the material forces that led to someone like Trump getting into power.
I do not claim to be some political whiz, but I am still somewhat attuned to the local 'vibe'. As always, it is possible that I simply see what I want to see and just form satisfying explanation afterwards, but I did see some of the things coming. So even if it is shallow, it appears to work as a heuristic more often than not. I admit that sometimes I wish it did not.
That said, if you can offer a counter explanation of the forces at play, I am all ears. Believe it or not, I am actually listening now.
<< If I understand you well, you seem to believe that Trump's government is a reaction to the democrats going too... what? Too woke? Too progressive?
Hmm, close. I think we can start with that. Democrats were in a weird spot, because, as you noted, they were putting a facade of a working man's party, while getting fairly cozy with interests that do not exactly align with those. From that perspective alone, internal conflicts of interests were inevitable. That helped build some of the discontent you mentioned ( and help build narrative about uniparty and bolster both sides are the same conversations ).
That said, to your point about going too woke, it did not help with people already being in a rather foul mood over being on the wrong end of the stick of economic policies and, as as results, were looking for something to focus that anger on. And the right was able to find at least two very viable scapegoats, who were both explicitly supported by the democratic party ( immigrants and trans ).
So in a sense, dems went too far on dumb stuff, while reps were playing for keeps.