Had Democrats delivered the landslide many were promising right up until election day, it’s not difficult to imagine the conclusions that would have ensued. Having defeated Bernie Sanders’s insurgent campaign for the Democratic nomination and run the pathologically centrist Biden in his place, centrists would have viewed the result as ultimate proof of the Left’s irrelevance.

We all know, of course, that the election yielded nothing of the kind. Despite Nancy Pelosi’s projections of confidence, Democrats will actually have fewer seats than they did in the House after the 2018 midterms. The Senate, meanwhile, hangs in the balance, with runoffs set to determine whether the party will command even a slim majority when Biden takes office in January.

Needless to say, these lackluster results have done nothing to prevent centrist Democrats from drawing the conclusion they were always likely to draw, i.e. that the left and its causes need to be pushed further to the margins.