Its super fucked, but its also people conditioned to believe that the Democrats are out there trying to do work for them, when they are just as invested in the US monoparty as the Republicans are. And those people are the majority of people on lemmy, pretty much representing a down vote brigade whenever you criticize Democrats, or point out that they are part and parcel to the dysfunction in our political system. They aren't adjacent or subject to the problem; they are the cause and source and one of the primary beneficiaries of the dysfunctional state. The Democrats are not your friends. They aren't on your side. They have shown that at a national level they do not give a fuck about the polices they campaign on. If it wasn't for Democrats setting the table for it in 2008, there would be no MAGA movement right now. Failing to go after any kind of meaningful policies or actual criminal prosecution of the engineers of the financial crisis; effectively validating BAU and the Bush era policies and tax cuts: they had no interest in differentiating themselves from contemporaneous Republicans. This left the primary criticism on the table and perfectly valid: that the extant political system doesn't reflect the will of its users. Enter MAGA. A specific and reactionary populist movement to address this criticism precisely. And it works because its transactional. MAGA voters are getting what they pay for when they vote MAGA. The policies are horrendous and deplorable, but you can count on MAGA politicians to work to get them into place. And herein lies the crux of the matter: Democrats are not interested in the politics they campaign on. They do not work to get the things they campaign on into place, because there are no consequences to them for not getting the job done. This is a direct extension of 'Blue No Matter Who' and "Any Blue Will Do". Democrats always have an excuse for why it can't be done. Republicans who fail to get it done are replaced.

You need to listen to what MAGA and rightwingers say when they are critical of the establishment. You don't have to agree with them and you shouldn't, but you should try to understand why they make the decisions they make and come to the conclusions that they do.

The MAGA movement was able to fuckold the Republican establishment into doing the will of their voters. It just happens that the will of their voters is vile and wrong, and basically orchestrated through the distribution of rightwing media. It went from outside radicals to business as usual in the Republican party in one election cycle.

Trump pushed for every single one of his campaign tent poles. He didn't get them all, but he pushed damned hard for almost all of them, and got or made progress on many of them. You should hate him. You should hate those policy positioned he pursued. But he did his voters right in that they voted for a person who would go after those policy positions, and he went after those policy position. These anti-human policies are what right wing voters want.

Here are is a video interviewing rightwingers. Pay attention to how they frame things, how they are structuring their arguments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w42DboOj-Xs

and a response:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoP8PjWwn30

And what you are describing, Republicans in the business of dangling carrots; that was the republican party for decades. Its also been the business of Democrats for decades. The difference is that the MAGA movement was able to force the Republicans into action on their polices. The progressive movement has been unable to do so with Democrats.