With the right-wing Supreme Court claiming the role of the country’s shadow legislature, the results of the midterm elections on Tuesday are less a referendum on Joe Biden and the Democrats’ two-year congressional majority and more a test of how well they can hold back the Right’s momentum. Meanwhile the Left, which was driving much of the political conversation just a couple years ago, is now buckled up tight in the back seat.

It’s not just this election cycle. The past few years have been a strange time for the American left. After a thrilling half-decade that witnessed a socialist come closer to the presidency than ever before, as well as the formation of a small but vocal democratic socialist congressional bloc, there’s now a pervasive sense of being stuck.

One major reason is that while it has become increasingly possible for politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to get popular “engines of solidarity” like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal onto the political agenda, there remains virtually zero chance of enacting even part of those programs.