Yes - but I'll also add that the left can be much more effective in electoral power by refusing the "Vote Blue No Matter Who" nonsense. Openly and proudly state that we can and will make the Democrats lose power if they cross us.

Not only is this what the right wing of the GOP does (successfully), it's what the right wing of the Democratic Party does, and how they've held power for 40 years.

A lot of folks feel like OP.

The dems won this time, but the folks who voted for them are in essence holding a gun to their heads: they'd better get their act together and deliver, or else.

The minute the dems step out of line, the voters will turn on them faster than you can say "Traitors... Hold my beer" and vote MAGA en mass as a violent epidermic reaction. And keeping fucking Schumer and fucking Jeffries around would be the first sign of treason.

Nobody, NOBODY likes the dems. The only reason they won is because people like lying demented orange billionaire grafter pedophiles even less.

Because supporting moderate democrats has stopped the fascists so well?

Don't vote shame people bro. You are wrong.

Probably not, but moving to another country will.

So stick with the status quo centrists because thats such a winning thing, is what you are saying eh habitualcynic.
So bold. Because centrism was winning so hard, right.

The innocent lives lost to criminals should be weighed against the innocent lives lost to these law enforcement groups enabled by the spying apparatus.

The tools of a dictator are also the tools of ordinary law enforcement.

Oppressive measures are seldom effective at their stated purposes: people are not safer in totalitarian states than they are in those with human rights. They're just unsafe for different reasons. Being at the mercy of a well-resourced mob of armed goons with official backing is not better than being preyed on by a number of small, disorganised non-state groups.

Look at arming police in the US. The end result is thousands of people per year being killed or maimed by those police. And yet crime rates are no lower than in countries where the police are less homicidal.

Similarly, pervasive surveillance captures a vast volume of largely irrelevant information, leading to the use of automated threat detection systems that invariably generate false positives that cause innocent people's lives to be ruined. Yet there is no protection from threats from state actors and their collaborators who act with impunity.

“some of your children are going to die because of this bill I am proposing, and that is an acceptable loss I am willing to pay to ensure our children get to live in a democracy.”

It's a false tradeoff. Adoption of increasingly authoritarian measures is not a free lunch and has the potential to kill even more children for other reasons. The costs of operating a surveillance society, with all its IT, weapons and snitches, have to be paid somehow. Typically that money comes from dismantling services that actually protect people's lives and health. They're sure as shit not going to take it from the military or the police.