Republicans put an end to truly leftist Democratic momentum by trouncing us in 5 election of 6 between 1968 and 1988. We’ll probably need to do the same to put an end to fascist momentum. But if that sounds hard imagine the difficulty of beating them in a civil war
I think the problem as ever is that the right wants to win and will do what it takes and the dems have never been that sure about anything. Which makes their strategy of "we just have to run the table for the next 15-30 business years and we will change nothing to facilitate that" particularly naive
Dems have changed quite a bit to facilitate that, in greatly expanding the power of unions to organize and, in states they control, making voting easier
But it’s a much more challenging environment now. For example, Dems worked very closely to strengthen the UAW and gain its support, but when they tried to protect the union in the usual way (tariffs on goods from low wage countries) they got howls of protest from even further Left
I think part of the answer is that Ds could embrace the totality of the coalition that wins them elections which is often made up of more black women then white shop stewards in Scranton but they have been hesitant to do that & they could offset a lot of dissent if they expanded their priorities
In terms of scale it doesn't quite equal the wholesale delegitimization of the electoral process the right is engaged in & in 68-88 Ds helped the right b/c they were enamored with Nixons classless society bullshit & then Reaganism & they are helping the right now via a lack of consequences
