If the republicans didn't exist - the democrats would be forced to invent them.

in a multiparty "democracy," (bourgeois class dictatorship) political parties usually refuse to fix problems because that would erode their platform that they run on forcing them to invest their resources (capital) into coming up with a new platform that might not be as appealing, which is high risk and strategically untenable, so instead they keep implementing half measures and letting their opponents occasionally roll back reforms so they can keep voters in thrall to them indefinitely by holding their civil rights and safety hostage.

This was so frustrating, because the centrist Lib IRL friends were all telling me that this shows how practical and effective Democrats were. Because, even without adopting radical and unelectable stances like Bernie, they are causing these great reductions in poverty. And we shouldn't worry about these built-in deadlines, because all entitlements and handouts are extremely hard to claw back like Social Security, because taking them away would be so unpopular with the voters that receive them. I told them that Democrats would claw everything back and find excuses for further austerity after they decide the pandemic was over, and everyone around me was angry that I would dare say that the Democrats weren't doing everything possible to improve the lives of all Americans to the limit of what Republicans could stop them.

The "all leftists are doomed to be Cassandras" effect is real.

That’s pretty much what happens in deep Blue states, a conservative block of Dems always manages to emerge that blocks anything significantly progressive from getting through the legislature