IN SEARCH of a quiet spot to conduct interviews at the Centre for American Progress’s Ideas Conference in Washington this week, Lexington found a space outside the gender-neutral bathroom. This seemed doubly appropriate. The conference, an important gathering of the Democratic establishment, reflected how thoroughly the party has embraced liberal causes in recent years. The panel discussions on race, women’s power and “Moving LGBTQ equality forwards” drew the biggest disapproving tuts and whoops of excitement all day. But it also seemed notable, for those who wonder whether such base-rallying tactics can bring the Democrats back from the wilderness, that even in this impeccably progressive company there was little demand for the gender-neutral facilities.

The gathering did acknowledge the economic anxiety that helped drive millions of working-class whites from the Democrats to Donald Trump in 2016. Sherrod Brown, a gravel-voiced senator from Ohio, which Mr Trump won thanks to huge support from unionised workers, helped kick things off. “The economy is where the motor” of Democratic policymaking is, said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, another of the dozen Democratic senators and governors with presidential ambitions making an appearance. The CAP, a think-tank launched in 2003 as a riposte to George Bush, also released a sheaf of policies aimed at low-skilled workers, including boosts to child care and infrastructure. Yet such familiar ideas mainly illustrated how little the Democrats have learned from their electoral wipeout in 2016.

There was more to that failure than Hillary Clinton’s incoherence or Donald Trump’s race-baiting. The Democrats lost the presidency to the most unpopular opponent they had ever faced. The centre-left, to be sure, is losing to right-wing populists wherever globalisation has caused factories to close—yet the Democrats’ defences were too weak. Their dedication to minority causes, though admirable, looked out-of-touch when paired with a relative unconcern for struggling whites. Mrs Clinton’s uninspiring incrementalism made that relative disregard seem absolute. Perhaps worse, considering the defining place it occupies in American debate, the Democrats failed to think critically about the issue that divides conservatives and progressives most, the role of government. Endlessly pushing publicly-funded solutions that Americans find unsatisfactory has made them the party of bad government. That is why the initial failure of Obamacare’s website, though a lesser matter than the 20m uninsured people covered by the reform, was so devastating to its reputation.

The Democrats’ response to 2016, which mixes day-to-day resistance to Mr Trump with a pro forma commitment to do better, shows little serious reflection on any of that. “There’s still a feeling that if we just redistribute wealth, everything will be all right,” says Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. “We haven’t reckoned with 2016, we haven’t changed our approach at all,” says Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado. The Ideas summit, at which neither lawmaker appeared, supported their analysis. Most of the presidential hopefuls spoke powerfully, but on predictable issues. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand spoke on women; Senator Cory Booker, an appealing if slightly plaintive talent, on inequality; Senator Bernie Sanders was supposed to speak on criminal justice, but reprised his stump speech on the “oligarchy in this country, whose greed is insatiable”. Only Senator Elizabeth Warren, in remarks on shoring up democracy, notably extended her range.

The new ideas on offer mostly involved swelling the size of a government which the Republicans’ latest tax cut has made even more unaffordable than it was. There was no attempt to grapple with the political traps Mr Trump has created for the party. There was, for example, no re-examination of the Democrats’ questionable support for “sanctuary cities” or their opposition to a border wall that looks like a $25-billion extravagance but not worth dying in a ditch over. Indeed there was hardly any discussion of immigration, perhaps the defining issue of the 2016 election.

The unhappy truth is that most Democrats don’t think they need new ideas to defeat Mr Trump and his party. And they may well be right. The vote in 2016 showed how irrelevant ideas are to winning elections. Mrs Clinton had plenty, Mr Trump had almost none. Yet just enough voters in swing states were willing to believe he had their backs to see him home. “There is no evidence good ideas are better for winning elections than bad ideas,” says Lee Drutman, a political scientist at New America, a think-tank. So long as the Democrats can find less objectionable candidates than Mr Trump, for the mid-terms and the 2020 general election, they will probably do well. But a party intent on attacking the root causes of Americans’ dissatisfaction should aim higher.

Here are three reasons why fresh thinking is needed on the centre-left. First, moderate Democrats need better arguments to explain why the all-government solutions preached by Mr Sanders are not merely unaffordable but bad. There is otherwise a risk they will mistake seething anti-Trump resistance with a desire for Mr Sanders’s similarly fervent pitch. Second, even if the Democrats could reclaim power with a divisive Sandernista agenda, they could not implement it. The reality is that neither party can bring big change without some support from the other. Hence, Barack Obama’s executive record has been easily shredded by the Republicans, and they now struggle to pass laws.

Change no one should believe in

The third, overarching, reason is that the contempt voters feel for both parties is grounded in those failures. To mitigate their disdain will above all require much better government. The Democrats trying out presidential pitches all seem to want that: their shortcomings are not to be compared to Mr Trump’s cynicism and greed. Yet they are some way from suggesting the requisite turnaround in Washington is a realistic prospect.