They believed that it was their literal destiny to always retain power, and therefore they would never lose the reigns of those areas they had empowered.
Such is the fate of everyone who thinks in terms of expediency instead of systems, to borrow another of Adams' ideas. KF is here to laugh at the salt, and the greatest source of salt is cognitive dissonance.
In 2016, they lost that power. It was so monumentally short sighted and arrogant, but I'd defy anyone here to prove me wrong. And now they no longer have any power at all, AND they have to contend with the fact that all the power they had with the people is gone, AND they have to deal with the fact that everything they empowered is now in Republican hands.
Disagree. The left lost
one office of power, the Presidency. They actually
picked up a few House/Senate seats that year. Then they took the House back
in 2018 and picked up 7 governor seats, the ramifications of which are being felt in Virginia and the impeachment hearings. They also retained control of the media, arts & culture, higher education, and Big Tech. In fact, all of those institutions doubled down on lefty values and censorship.
The left isn't raging because they lost power, they're raging because they lost the very visible office that singularly embodies power. Maybe they lose again in 2020 (I hope so), but that will be because of their unchecked lunacy, not because of a comprehensive rollback of their agenda.
They don't pander because it works, they pandered because they believed that lip service was all they'd ever need now that they had all the power. And Republicans don't pander because it works, its them trying to use a Democrat strategy without... any real realization of what it is, how to do it, or that it really doesn't fundamentally work.
Pandering works on the left to keep the narrative going. You can't justify a vote for the other guy if you don't have a narrative to rationalize it to yourself. If you're a PoC, and you're presented with the choice between a "racist" and a panderer, you need to have a desperately pragmatic reason to vote for the guy you think hates you; otherwise, you go with the guy who
might like you.
The breakdown in the narrative doesn't come from the other side rationally explaining its economic policies. It only breaks when you can counter the narrative, or provide a better one that can be believed without destroying the voter's identity.
It's not impossible to do that, as illustrated by a few of the black KF members posting on this thread. But until you see blacks voting for Republicans over the 10% mark, you can not claim that leftist pandering doesn't work.
(On the other hand, I agree with you that Republicans don't understand why racial pandering doesn't work for them. As I outlined above, it's an obligatory defensive tactic for them, not one that actually gains ground. Trump may be different because he blows narratives up just by being Trump, but that's not a tactic which can scale to the entire Republican party.)