Uh, yeah, we know. We've known for a decade.

The question is what we're going to do about it, and nobody seems to have a good answer. Most of the answers I've heard seem to come down to "do the thing I've said all along, only harder".

It won't be settled by Democratic policy. They do not have anything as exciting to offer as Trump's egotism.

They might find another charismatic leader on par with Obama, but the haven't laid the groundwork the way the Republican party has for decades. This "deeply unwell" state required the creation of a complete alternative information ecosystem: Fox News, most prominently, but running all up and down the scale: web sites, "experts", talk radio, etc. Think tanks like the Heritage Foundation created the talking points, and they were used by Republican politicians, religious leaders, and now tech oligarchs.

Those think tanks did not plan for Trump, but he fit perfectly into a place for their agenda that they didn't realize.

It's not clear if a parallel plan would work for Democrats, or any other progressive group. But even if it could, it's way, way, way too late to start it.

The thing I hear most often is to try understanding the Republican constituency. We've been doing that; I don't believe it when they say we haven't. Again, that's how we got Trump. Every time Democrats moved to the right, Republicans (including "moderates") moved further into the extremes. The Democrats are having problems because their own left wing doesn't trust them any more.

The best I can come up with:

* Democrats embrace their left

* Hope that they can get some genuinely leftist policies done (over the objections of the Democratic center).

* Hope that they actually make things better, instead of worse.

* Hope that Republicans see that their own push towards right-wing extremism isn't working, and return to something more like moderate conservatism.

That's a lot of hope and not a lot of details.