I’ll stick to Kamala cuz you brought her up.

IMO, they know what to do if they want to win. FDR showed them and was the most successful Democratic president in modern history. successfully. Bernie showed them by getting unprecedented number of people, young and old, rural and urban, to support him - without any institutional backing.

If Kamala wanted to truly, from the bottom of heart, win, above everything else - just like what Trump wants - then she would’ve done what they did. Promised populist policies, and presented herself as anti-establishment and gotten the staff that would support that.

Of course, this would require the DNC to back her up, giving her the kind of support Trump receives - but lets suppose for a moment they also want to just truly win at all costs - if that is what they want above all else, then why wouldn’t they?

This didn’t happen. This never happens. It will never happen. They might gesture towards some populist messaging sometimes (because there are factions within every group) but overall? They don’t want to win like that. They cannot afford to.

So they lose. And they combine their forces to defeat anyone who threatens to win along those lines.

To Democrats, being the Center party, being the neoliberal party, making sure they at some level appear to have some working-class voices, but never allowing them to rise beyond a certain level or amass more than a trivial amount of power, is far more important that “winning”. That is, in my opinion, their role.