There's this common sales pitch that would go as follows, if it were honest:

"We've been losing political contests here in the US for the past forty-five years, if not for longer. We lose because both of the major parties are in fact against us. We are in fact big losers. America could have have China's high-speed rail, Finland’s education system, Canada's universal health care, Germany's solar power, or Europe's mass transit. But we don't have the dimmest possibility of attaining any of those things. Instead, what we have is a country ruled by billionaires, a country where businesses act as if their customers are made of money, jobs don't pay the rent, politics is a commodity, "defense" means a global police state, mass shootings occur every day, the standard approach to the problem of the unhoused is “sweeps,” and education, health care, and housing are affordable only at the cost of deep debt servitude. We are in actual practice deep, deep losers."

"But hey! If we pretend that the Democratic Party is really on our side, then when they win, we can also pretend that we won! And there are other pretend benefits! We can do our part by voting, and then we can wash our hands of it all, absolving ourselves of any responsibility for political outcomes. And if we feel guilty about this, we can participate in a No Kings protest, and we can give tiny amounts of money to the next twenty people who ask us on the streets for our spare change."

"Occasionally, of course, someone expresses dissatisfaction with this type of politics. Let's agree to say that they, and only they, are the losers."

Is that you? Is that your politics?