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It’s a combination of:
There are some exceptions, of course, but they’re rare. DC is really an incredibly strange and sociopathic place on a human cultural level.
This is why I don’t understand the attitude that the way to progress is to keep punishing the Democrats until they figure it out on their own. The ones who haven’t figured it out, which is most of them, aren’t going to figure it out, any more than Google is going to realize that ruining search was a bad idea and they need to start making products people like again. It’s just not in their DNA to think that way.
If that is their only concern why are they not supporting the party that wants to tax them less?
It's mostly a contest of rich people who want as much as they can get, but do want the US economy to continue being okay, versus on the other side rich people who don't mind burning it all down as they as they pay less taxes for the next few years. The Democrats are largely propped up by the former group.
The occasional leader like Biden or Obama who wants to be to the left of Reagan doesn't change the fact that the "don't burn it though" donor class is in charge of the Democrats. This is at the root of a lot of the things that make people say "but if Biden is good, why hasn't he solved climate change or Israel or wealth inequality yet? Checkmate libs, he's clearly the exact same as Trump."
Mostly it all works out, over the long term, as a safe equilibrium for the majority of the wealthy people. The Republicans get to do their arson about half the time, which makes the super-wealthy even more wealth for a short time, and before it can get out of control, the Democrats come into power to put a check on it before it can start hurting the people who were born privileged. This election, that equilibrium has been upset, and Trump is planning to become unremovable and then badly hurt everyone, rich and poor alike, which probably means the rich people will manage to realize they fucked up and turn their media empires solidly against Trump and get rid of him. If they can. There may be a significant amount of damage that gets done by the time their now-antiquated weapons can accomplish that, if it's even possible at all with Russia and a bunch of techbro rich idiots solidly in the tank for him. They may all have to simply shrug and abandon the US for some new parasitic host, leaving the corpse behind.
Of course you're entitled to your view but I consider that an egregiously cynical take, not to mention a bit convoluted and with a hint of conspiracism. The fact remains that the Republicans are offering more money to them, up front, now, so the simplest explanation is that they are motivated by higher ideals than just money.
It's an incredibly cynical take. I think it's accurate, though. Observe how the Democrats generally treat Bernie Sanders, or for that matter how they treated Dan Osborn. I don't think the idea that Washington mostly runs on money takes any kind of X-Files leap to take seriously.
I'm not trying to say we shouldn't support Democrats, especially because they are the only viable party that has some nuggets of actual care for the people embedded within them in a few random places. But I don't see any other explanation than the one I gave, in answer to OP's completely valid question about why they keep giving such lukewarm endorsement to such incredibly sensible and popular ideas.
It comes across to me as much more realpolitik than needless cynicism. I also don't think there's any conspiracism in there, it's much more game theoretic, in the sense that we've reached an uncoordinated local optimum that's hard to break out of. There's not nearly as many smoke-filled back rooms where deals are made as people think, but there is a lot of shared interest in not rocking the boat among wealthy people.