Comment by Aunche

That doesn't really refute what they said. It didn't "actually" make things less authoritarian. From my perspective, the only thing that's worth giving Dems the benefit of the doubt is that they haven't had House/Senate/Presidency control for the entirety of my adult life. If they had that and they still managed to be entirely ineffective, then it would just be entirely undeniable that they're complicit in the rise of authoritarianism.

As is, there's this veneer of plausible deniability that, shucks, they really want to help but those other guys don't let them. The practical reality of their policy making is to increase authoritarianism under the guise of "some progress is better than no progress", disregarding that what Democratic leaders call progress their voters (and other democratic societies) call regress.

(Don't get me wrong, I hold no illusion that the red party is at all less authoritarian; my point is that the blue party demonstrates through their actual policy that they are also authoritarian.)