Does Ossoff's defeat mean we can start moving the Democrats in a progressive direction now?
Bernie Bros when Democrats win: "The voters are now receptive to our message! Better move left!"
Some call them "the tea party of the left". Didn't "usual tea party" acted the same way since 2009 and still continues to do?
First, the term "Tea Party", which was originally (circa 2010) a group focused on fighting against high taxes and the waste of taxpayer money, was hijacked by extremists and fake news sites, then those people and extreme right-wingers like Ted Cruz acted in the way you're describing, yes. When Mitt Romney lost in 2012, to them, it was because his moderation on certain issues made him too similar to President Obama to inspire sufficient turnout among his base voters.
Then you got the bogus line of "when we boldly proclaim conservative values, we win", which I know liberals have also used. It's technically true but misleading because we only boldly proclaim those values in states where they are popular, i.e. red states.
So yeah, then you get moderates blamed for losses and extremists arguing that moderates' wins are a mandate for extremists' policies because they happen to belong to the same party. Very annoying.
