Great essay Katherine. I used to think that if the GOP (Gestapo Operatives Party) and its American Taliban are going to calls us elitist and/or commies (no matter what we do), we ought to stop pulling our punches. But now they are calling us all cheats and traitors, and responding in kind only seems to confirm their conspiracy theories in their minds. I now believe that the Dems decades of being the Republican Light Party, and then morphing into the Bankers First party under Clinton and Obama, has taken its toll on our credibility. Biden has actually been dipping into the old FDR style economics, but it may be too little too late. Their pandering to plutocrats allowed fascism to revive, with its diabolical anti-social populism. Now being the only grown up in the room may be insufficient. Impolite of not, name calling (that the GOP deserves) only works to further degrade the discourse. Dems need to run on democracy, but also on exciting new policies to address our BIFURCATED ECONOMY. Exciting times eh? Note: https://medium.com/@daneke/a-requiem-for-american-democracy-5aa717cc7f40 and https://medium.com/@daneke/breaking-the-birfurcated-economy-financiers-and-the-crisis-of-public-imagination-fee35d84cc43