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& #39;s become pretty clear that there is no such level of threat. They& #39;ll politely watch it go under. https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1330174900519260163">https://twitter.com/brianbeut...

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& #39;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& #39;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& #39;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& #39;s try something else or lose American democracy. Blah blah, pointless rant, blarg. </fin>