Perhaps the most fundamental flaw within progressivism's worldview is that the movement sees itself in the majoritarian flow; that is, it sees America as ideologically center-left, rather than as what it is, which is reliably centrist to center-right.
No amount of correction, it seems, can ever educate the left. One can repeatedly cite, as I have, Gallup's evidence of a center-right nation -- this year, for instance, 42 percent of Americans self-describe as conservative and 35 percent as moderate; last year, 40 percent self-described as conservative, same percentage as moderate -- and the echo from the left will be, I guarantee you: The people are with us!
Reality, however, helps to explain why the tea party's ideology is more embraceable by the average voter than the unprofessional left cares to fathom.
There are the aforementioned numbers, which mostly give the game away. But there's also this, from Pew Research of this year: "[M]ore voters view the Democratic Party as very liberal than see the Republican Party as very conservative.... As a result, the average rating for the Democratic Party’s ideology among all voters is somewhat farther to the left than the Republican Party's is to the right."
Nate Silver put it this way: "[I]f the Tea Party appears extreme to some voters, the Democratic agenda does to others. Arguably, in fact, the Tea Party -- by normalizing extremely conservative viewpoints -- makes mainstream Democratic views seem more extreme by comparison."
Pew reconfirmed, as well, Gallup's findings on "voters' average ratings of their own ideology, which is slightly to the right of center." Pew's key finding, though, is the former: the Democratic Party is seen by voters as more liberal than it actually is, while the GOP is seen as less conservative than it is.
Just to be clear, the reason for this is voters' ideological proximity. The majority are already somewhat to the right, hence the far right (insert tea party here) isn't viewed as being all that distant, while the mildly liberal is viewed from the center-right as distinctly remote.
Does this confine progressivism to a hopeless electoral position? Certainly not. The countervailing answer to this biased morbidity is incrementalism -- that which is less ideologically alien and thus politically doable -- which Barack Obama has successfully introduced with a prudent amount of muscle, only to be scorned by progressively blind absolutists.
The numbers behind the nation's political sentiment are against the left. It's just that simple. How to refit the left, then, with realistic vision? I haven't a clue.