Matt young I think that the problem is still predominantly a rhetorical one and only partly a problem with democratic institutions. People with means are winning the rhetorical war. Conservative rhetoric is has a much easier time succeeding because we live in an era of bad education and factional sources of truth. Traditional conservative arguments (as laid out brilliantly by A.O. Hirschman) focus on the futility of reform and the supposed law of [bad] unintended consequences. The continuing success of these weak arguments is encouraged both by factionalism and by a dogged scientism in their opponents. While caution in presentation of social science data, and careful cost benefit analysis in policymaking certainly have their place, that place is not politics. The problem with liberals and moderates is that they actually take the claims made by relatively unbiased economists seriously. So paralysis and factionalization kills the liberal narrative (which is the best, albeit equally unsteady, retort that liberals have when advocating for progressive reforms.) Big reforms stall and the democratic ground game (i.e. incremental reform), because it is truly a party that represents a big tent of interests, is basically non-existent.