Left-liberals on a global level badly failed 3 times in this century for ideological reasons.

 2008 when they believed during the presidential election , that there were no important differences between the democratic candidate Gore and G.W.Bush.

Similarly their contempt for the democratic candidate in the presidential election 2016 followed the emotion of contempt which was caused by the demonization of  Hillary Clinton by the Russians and Western conservative political strategists.

Paul Krugman once called the European democracies the most decent in human history. The living standard in the UK and the reputation of democracy world wide  would be endangered if the Brexit hardliners prevailed. Nevertheless the British Labour Party was not able to say clearly «no» during  the Brexit referendum. Corbyn and other Labour hardliners have denounced the EU as second-evil capitalistic system after the USA.

Now, something similar could be in the making:

Jun 6, 2019, TheHill.com

Biden faces first crisis as front-runner

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s embrace of the Hyde amendment, prohibiting federal funds from being used for abortion, combined with a new plagiarism controversy have created the most challenging week for the Democratic front-runner since he entered the race for the White House earlier this spring.

Biden has led public opinion polls by double-digits since announcing his campaign but will now face new questions about whether he can retain his lead.

…

Abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood also urged Biden to rethink his support.

“To support the Hyde amendment is to block people — particularly women of color and women with low incomes — from accessing safe, legal abortion,” Planned Parenthood said in a statement on Twitter. “As abortion access is being restricted and pushed out of reach in states around the country, it is unacceptable for a candidate to support policies that further restrict abortion.”

…

Commentary:

I regard this as an absolute, ideological position. Why should left-liberals in a period where political conditions for abortion politics are deteriorating, make this issue to a dominant one and missing to focus on the most important issue: preserve democracy and rule of law.

We should know that our societies periodically engage in (self-)destructive behaviour in politics as during the Wars of Korea and Vietnam or during the times of Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism and during the second Iraq war under G.W. Bush.

But we should also realize, that the amount of destruction during these self-destructive phases did go back in the course of time.

So the daily losses  of lives  of American soldiers during the second Iraq war were smaller than during the War of Vietnam. The economic consequences of the financial crisis of 2008 for the living standards of the broad population seemed to me less severe than during the economic crises of the second half of the 20th century.

So, humanity was on the rise since the 1960s.

Therefore we should understand that real progress happened although a lot of bad things took place during past decades. We should  not act in a mode of desperation but focus on the preservation of democracy as a prerequesite  for a more human way of life.