I just watched the mayor of LA (biden ambassador nominee) use "I held my breath for photos" as an excuse for being photographed maskless at the Rams game (Gov Newsom was also there in maskless photos). He answered this AT a press conf at Sofi so he knew he'd be asked this question. this was his prepared answer lol

yes it's a huge nothingburger that will literally affect no one, and Garcetti could have just let it go and took his lumps, and we'd have forgotten about it by the weekend, but he couldn't do that so now he's turned himself into fucking meme.

but from Newsom going to fancy dinners to Nancy needing her hair did, to Kente cloths, to dna tests to prove my .001% native americanness, when did dems get so terrible at this? And whatever the things that they are doing correctly, when did they get so bad at communicating it? Yeah, alot of these things are inconsequential with disproportionate political cost, esp as opposed to say, Ted Cruz literally fleeing his state while it was in crisis, and only getting dragged on twitter a few days for it... but it's not like D's are free of actual corruption

So while i agree with your sentiment that relying on sure losers will just make things worse, how much of this is just on "the establishment" to do better? And how? I'm not really someone that thinks they need to veer more left but how do they veer less awful? they can't just keep getting by on being the least bad option.