The biggest threat the progressive polices is the lefts inability to recognize their being played, not by the Democratic Party but by the media who baits them into blaming the party for things it cannot control.
The easiest mark is the one who thinks themselves too smart to be a mark.
Too many people on the left have the attitude of "no one likes him because he has no friends" -- too stupid to see their own opinion is why the situation exists.
Coupled with being unable to accept they are ever wrong and the blindness to progress that has occurred. The left is its own worst enemy. The right hasn't had to try painting us as ineffective in decades, we do it better to ourselves.