I used to wonder, "what level of threat would rouse the institutional Democratic Party to actually FIGHT, fight like desperate people willing to do anything to save their country?" It's become pretty clear that there is no such level of threat. They'll politely watch it go under. https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1330174900519260163

The lesson the Dem gerontocracy learned from impeachment is that it was unpopular. It lost them votes. It reaffirmed their priors that fighting back is a losing proposition. None of them reflected on how we've ended up in a social/media environment where that could happen ...

... where an openly criminal scumbag president could loot the country & the public could so fully & profoundly misunderstand the situation that they see impeachment as "partisan squabbling." Instead they just accept the polls & herd in the other direction.

What they don't seem to see is, in an environment where political media & discourse has effectively been set up to provide unlimited cover to cheaters & liars, *there is no winning*. "Talk about health care" all you fucking want, you can't win in that environment.

What none of them seem to conclude is, "gosh, the left is a sad shell. We need a robust left populist movement providing bottom-up pressure & a modern media apparatus of our own that can get our message out & combat misinformation." Just ... "run away, run away!"

If you display learned helplessness long enough, the whole system rearranges around it & it starts to look inevitable, like trying anything else would only backfire. But at this point, it's try something else or lose American democracy. Blah blah, pointless rant, blarg. </fin>