A still-forming thought:

Perhaps we might usefully view this pathetic situation as a major political party realignment in the US that has been left half-finished. When Nixon adopted Goldwater’s Southern Strategy and won, the Republican Party effectively became a fascist party — but the Democrats never became an anti-fascist party.

2/

[disclaimer: not a political scientist, just riffing here]

Plurality voting forces a two-party system. There will always be two parties (or if a third forms, the system will rapidly collapse back to two; this happened twice in US history).

The role of the two parties can change, however. Parties are coalitions, and coalitions are heterogeneous. There are lots of ways to draw lines through the myriad political interests to form two coalitions of roughly equal size. And those lines can shift.

3/

When Nixon adopted Goldwater’s Southern Strategy and won, that was a party realignment. The new foundation of the Republican coalition was “throw anti-Black racism lots of ethnonationalist red meat so they support the concentration of wealth.”

I’d venture that ethnonationalism captured to concentrate power is (or inexorably becomes) fascism. Nixon’s realignment made the Republican Party the fascist party.

@AnarchoNinaWrites’s post below on this topic touched off my train of thought here:

4/

https://jorts.horse/@AnarchoNinaWrites/114926186431482846

[disclaimer: not a political scientist, talking out of my ass]

For the two parties are going to divide up the electorate, if one is the fascist party, maybe the other •has• to be the anti-fascist party — not just philosophically, but for practical reasons. Maybe you just can’t maintain a viable coalition to oppose a fascist party without bringing everyone who opposes fascism into your coalition. Sure feels that way now.

5/

But the Democratic party still at heart seeks to be a progressive party in the FDR/LBJ mold. The party’s gambit since Nixon has been that an FDR-shaped coalition would force the fascist-shape coalition to fracture. It looked like that might even be true for a few of the Obama years. Sadly, nope.

6/

The result is a two-party system where the parties are going at cross purposes: one going full naked stinking fascist, and the other not pushing back in the opposite direction but just…pushing sideways, wishing for the resurrection of a party split that’s gone.

This may explain in part the endless appeal of the centrist mush-meal pitch: “We just need a party that meets these poor benighted Trump voters with common-sense answers to kitchen table issues!” That sounds like the way you win the 1932 presidential election! Yay!

7/

I’m rambling, and struggling to figure out the heart of what I’m getting at.

It’s something about how maybe we should view the fecklessness of Democratic politicians the OP laments not as the •source• of the problem, but as the inevitable result of failing to form anti-fascist coalition, and to make that coalition into the other major political party in this country.

I feel like there’s something useful in there, something maybe strategically helpful that gives us a sense of agency. And man do I hate grand political cynicisms that rob us of our sense of agency.

/end