The left wingers already lost because they don't have the money and power. There's never been a lot to gain in making things better for the people who need help

The left wingers already lost because they don't have the money and power. There's never been a lot to gain in making things better for the people who need help (the goal of left wing ideology), and a lot to gain in making things better for people who have money and power (the goal of right wing/libertarian ideology). Large corporate interests are largely right wing and extremely politically active. There's nothing comparable on the left (possibly the copyright lobby which has aligned themselves with the democratic party generally but is orthogonal to the whole debate really) Corporate interests shape the political spectrum so we steadily move to a more and more pro-corporate political scene. The country has shifted so far over to the right that right-wingers from 20 30 years ago look like radical leftists of today, and the leftists from 20 or 30 years ago are laughed out of the political arena. We are entering a new gilded age, which will be followed by a new great depression (we narrowly dodged one recently), which will be followed by the resurgence of progressive ideas until corporate interests wrest back control of the political process and the cycle begins again. But given how internationalized things are I suspect if we enter a great depression and liberals take hold the rich will simply leave and move to a country willing to bow to their interests.