That's the thing. America's majority "progressive" cohort are still a little right of centre by the standard of most other developed societies. But for many conservatives, I think "progressive" is synonymous with "the far-left" in their minds, when really it's more just playing catch up with the world or trying to restore intended concepts of the US Constitution.

Health, income protection, economic regulation, appropriately funded education, crisis/disaster/wellbeing support, etc. These are your "basics" by default. Common rights and protections for individuals. But if your country doesn't have them, it would be seen as progress attaining them in the same way roads, voting, and sanitation were progress. It's be foolish to stop evolving a society under the idea that there's no benefit to new and proven advancements in society and culture. Your average American progressive just wants to roll that update in and get some nice new features and quality of living. When a conservative says "no!" they're not realising they're saying "yes" to continuing in their modern dark ages.

... they're literally too stupid and un self aware to effectively be on anyone's 'side'.

This is is the kind of absolute moron 'median voter' that the Dems claim they are trying to appeal to, and they claim their method of being appealing to this person is to workshop and focus group develop a perflectly bland, near meaningless corporate marketing campaign that is so very obviously inauthentic.

Spoiler: You don't effectively message/market to inconsistent idiots with fake intellectualism, you effectively message to them with consistent and easily digested messages that are spoken with genuine conviction, confidence, and a consistent style.

As an example: Compare Mamdani's campaign to Harris'.

I am so very tried of pretending that the average adult American is not an actual fucking moron who reads and writes and thinks at a 5th to 6th grade level.

They are.

Don't act like adult idiot children are even capable of having a consistent or coherent worldview that extends beyond their immediate day to day experience.

They're not, they run on vibes, they're mostly concerned with being on the side of whatever seems to be popular right now, like middle school friend group dynamics, and they also have the 'is this person lying to me' assessment capabilities of a middle schooler who's always on their phone in school.

Democracy doesn't work in a nation of uneducated and un/misinformed dolts.

Nearly every prominent historical philosopher/pilitical theorist who ever argued for democracy would also tell you that there must be a significant and effective effort to ensure the masses are capable of critical thinking and are also reasonably well informed.

... A h(y)uge reason that Trump and MAGA are even politically possible in the first place is that so many Americans are just objectively morons... and that is because the Republicans have been for at least 40 years, successfully corrupting and corroding public education.

Why do they do this? Many reasons, but a big one is that morons are easier to lie to and trick, run confidence games on.

What does a non profit do when it wants to try to raise support for a democratic society in an illiberal region?

It funds universal schools and sports clubs, to establish a foundation of learning, curiosity, and in person community involvement.

What do you do to destroy the fundamental basis for democracy?

You ruin and gatekeep and exclusionarily containerize those things.

This stupid-ass "both sides" bullshit is why we have Trump as president.

This guy is not a "progressive" you fucking moron.