There is a lot of discussion these days in the publications I read about how the left is more depressed than the right. Is that something which arises naturally from liberal ideology, or is something else going on?
Depression is clearly associated with a feeling of helplessness. The McConnell Project–a reactionary judiciary, a legislature in which reactionaries are overrepresented due to gerrymandering and the vagaries of the federal system, and the filibuster–effectively blocks the left from implementing its agenda on the federal level, even when it is popular with the public as a whole. Putting an end to the McConnell Project would require the left to engage in the same kind of illiberal tactics that the right openly and unashamedly embraces, which is unthinkable today, although it may not be at some point in the future. Call it the Polish Problem.
The bottom line is that reactionaries have every reason to be happy; they are running wild in the red states, and the Supreme Court is doing their bidding on the federal level. They are winning! The left’s gloom thus has nothing to do with ideology, and everything to do with process.