The Bush administration proved that having faith in a corporate agenda is a bad idea. They couldn’t have done it without true believers. There are different philosophies of governance at work across the entire political spectrum. There are true believers who think that we're supposed to FOLLOW these "leaders" (regardless of whether their policies make sense or not). Progressives have always understood the fact that these "leaders" (i.e. elected officials) WORK FOR US (i.e. WE ARE THE BOSS) and if they don’t DO THEIR JOBS (i.e. use all available political leverage to enact policies that a vast majority of Democratic voters know are important, real HCR, real financial reform etc.) we will FIRE THEIR ASSES AND HIRE NEW ONES.
The problem is this administration refuses to use all available political leverage, while competing with a republican party that will use every form of political leverage possible.
The most prominent example of this (and it will likely be historically recorded as such) is when this administration came into power, they could have demanded more cooperation from republicans by indicating they would address the dangerous constitutional precedents set by the previous administration, uphold Geneva Convention obligations, investigate the previous administration for violations of international law, (torture investigations, indefinite detention, denial of Habeas Corpus, warrantless surveillance etc.), unless there was some serious cooperation from republicans on priorities of the Democratic party. No good explanation has been offered as to why this didn’t happen. But true believers were told to "look forward" with regard to the dangerous constitutional precedents set by the previous administration and it was accepted without question.
Something about protecting republican war criminals (i.e. torture is a war crime) of the previous administration (who got their way on everything because "democrats" compromised) while at the same time allowing their fellow republicans to wreck our agenda (because they refuse to compromise) doesn’t quite pass the smell test. As long as this true-believer-trend continues (and democrats continue to accept record corporate contributions etc.), "democrats" like these are all we’re likely to get. The problem is, "democrats" like these could stay in power for the next hundred years and they would still make concession to people who want them to fail, without getting a single vote from republican lawmakers who introduce the designed-to-fail ideas for which they make concessions in order to include in legislation. These "democrats" are being paid to fail and they really like their "profession" too much to use all available political leverage and legislate in the interests of the majority of our party.
Our job as citizens is to self-govern (hold our elected officials accountable). If the true believers would have done their jobs as citizens, which IMHO is to not buy in to every line of shit thrown out by our elected officials (i.e. self govern), put the pressure on our employees (elected officials) instead of dissenters who insist that our elected officials use all available political power (leverage) to enact the policies that a majority of voters within our party want, we may have been able to avoid this potentially disastrous outcome in the coming midterms. IMHO, the true-believer-types are the problem-people within our party (along with being the problem across the entire political spectrum).