Michael Hiltzik: Trump's defeat was supposed to launch a new progressive era, so what happened?
Democrat Joe Biden appears to have ousted Donald Trump from the White House, yet for many Democrats and progressives the results of the election have produced mostly disillusionment, even despair.
The reason isn't hard to decipher. They expected the end of the Trump era to be marked by a "blue wave," a surge of progressive political power that would sweep away not only Trump but right-wing obstructionism in the Senate and, in time, even the Supreme Court.
But the wave isn't visible in the results, so what's consumed the left is pessimism and gloom.
The model for this take comes from the liberal writer Eric Levitz of New York Magazine, who pronounced the election "a nigh-catastrophic setback for progressive politics in the United States."
Levitz declared the Senate lost to Democrats for at least a decade to come and even cast doubt on the party's ability to hold on to the White House in 2024. All this before all the votes have been counted in
