that work you put in helped get us in a more progressive space today.

But it didn't, because we haven't. All that's happened is the same old party machine has revamped its branding a bit. Half that crop of DSA freshmen are Third Way plants or other dissembling opportunists using the current zeitgeist to further their careers, and the other half will never be allowed to be anything but the bait that keeps dragging left-leaning Liberals back to the center right party.

I hope that in a decade, I do not end up as pessimistic and sapped of hope as you are currently.

As long as you never look under the hood of the party to see how its power structures work and never question any party narratives about why policy keeps moving right no matter how much the voters want it to move left, then you probably won't. But you'll also never see the world you think you're voting for.