Among the most memorable sections of Thomas Frank’s 2016 book Listen, Liberal is the chapter on blue states. Setting out to interrogate a common refrain from national Democrats, Frank’s line of inquiry is a straightforward and useful one:

When you press Democrats on their uninspiring deeds — their lousy free trade deals, for example, or their incomprehensible Wall Street reform legislation — when you press them on any of these things, they reply automatically that this is the best anyone could have done. After all, they had to deal with those awful Republicans, and those awful Republicans wouldn’t let the really good stuff through. They filibustered in the Senate. They gerrymandered in the congressional districts. And, besides, it’s hard to turn an ocean liner. Surely you don’t think the tepid-to-lukewarm things Clinton and Obama have done in Washington really represent the fiery Democratic soul.

It’s an argument you hear all the time, and one that’s now recurring thanks to the Biden administration’s steady climbdown from many of its own campaign promises: Democrats, or so the story goes, would do everything short of seizing the means of production if only they had the votes and faced fewer institutional barriers. The myth is a tidy and convenient one, and rings true insofar as America’s political institutions are quite obstructive and antidemocratic.