> He did pull out of JCPOA, which some of his electorate actually wanted for various reasons

How's that worked out for them? People in Appalachia feeling pleased about the pain inflicted on the Iranian people? Or are they pleased that Iran stopped adhering to the deal and have resumed uranium enrichment? Or are they pleased about Iran's expanding influence in the Middle East?

It doesn't take much to to give people what they want. Pulling out of the JCPOA took only a couple of days. But it was not a good decision, and the fallout wasn't felt by the people who pushed for it.

You're absolutely correct that some of what I want is to make my own life easier and be lazy, but there's also a political calculus. Almost anything I do to cater to them helps split my own political coalition.

One possible way to look at 2016 is that the left wing of the Democratic party felt taken advantage of. The party put forth a centrist candidate (after 8 years of a President who wasn't nearly as progressive as they'd hoped). There was little enthusiasm, while the people you've asked me to understand voted for a candidate who was obviously awful in many ways.

So the political calculus can say, "It doesn't matter what they want. You can't reach them, as evidenced by their willingness to vote for such a terrible candidate. I need instead to lean in the exact opposite direction, doing things that they hate vocally, because they can't vote against me any harder than they already do."

That's my excuse to not act on that knowledge. I have only so many actions I can take, and I will spend them in the way that does the most good.

Note that I'm not committed to that, merely explaining the view as being something other than "they're assholes so I can be an asshole back". But I do believe that the time has come to consider making them chase me rather than the other way around.

You're correct: I conflated liberals, progressives, and Democrats. There are definitely important distinctions, but I conflated them as all being roughly on the same side when it comes to politics and dealing with the opposition party.

As for "examples", take a look at those two books I mentioned. There are many more books, and many op-ed pieces every time Democrats lose elections.

It's only relatively recently that the more progressive wing of the party has said, "Hey, rather than try to bend over backwards to attract moderate conservatives, how about you garner more enthusiasm from your left wing?" Or at least, they've been saying it for a while, but were generally dismissed. I think 2016 made the proposition more thinkable: if they will vote for the Republican candidate even if he's obviously insane, maybe a new approach is needed.