The Democratic party is in a funny little place. At the nadir of its political power, at least in modern times, it seems on the verge of a Donald Trump-fueled comeback. Republicans are staring down a blue wave as people in all kinds of places throughout the country are showing up at the ballot box in a fury. Legislative and congressional seats that Trump won with ease in 2016 are falling into Democratic hands.

But the story remains how much party leaders are resisting the actual energy within their party. Given the catastrophic loss of the White House two years ago and the down-ballot bleeding that characterized much of the Barack Obama years, it may seem odd the Democratic chieftains still think they know what’s best – and not the voters driving the change.

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The Democratic National Committee is at the center of this contradiction. After the scandalous tenure of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who led the DNC during the 2016 Democratic primary and was forced to resign at the start of the Democratic national convention, the party was crying out for new leadership.

Wasserman Schultz angered progressives by favoring Hillary Clinton behind the scenes over Bernie Sanders. She was also viewed, within even Obama administration circles, as an unreliable ally who had done little to build up the Democratic party nationwide.

To replace Wasserman Schultz, much of the grassroots left rallied around the Minnesota representative Keith Ellison. Remarkably, Ellison even scored the backing of Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader and a near-platonic embodiment of establishment Democratic politics.

Yet Ellison was viewed as a threat. Allies of Obama and Clinton beat back what appeared to be a consensus candidacy, installing Tom Perez, the former secretary of labor. As a consolation prize, Ellison was named his deputy.

More than a year into his tenure, Perez has taken credit for special election wins in the Trump era. The DNC’s fundraising lags behind the Republican National Committee – Republicans have been consistently better at the party-building game – but Perez’s acolytes believe he is on track to restore Democratic greatness.

What remains murky is what the party stands for and what Perez’s policy vision, beyond vague talking points, actually is. The rationale for his tenure is still not evident.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Andrew Cuomo is facing a vigorous primary challenge from actor Cynthia Nixon.’ Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

Perez has somehow managed to mix a certain blandness with an ability to offend. It was a strange sight to see Perez wading into a New York governor’s race, of all places, last month, showing up at New York’s Democratic convention as the party endorsed Governor Andrew Cuomo for a third term.

Cuomo is facing a vigorous primary challenge from the actor Cynthia Nixon, who is campaigning on the many ways Cuomo’s triangulation has disappointed the left. Our Revolution, a Bernie Sanders-affiliated group, is backing Nixon’s campaign.

Regardless of your thoughts on Cuomo’s eight years in office (he has mixed serious progressive accomplishments with austerity and the empowering of state senate Republicans) what is the purpose of the leader of the national party showing up somewhere to endorse an incumbent with $30m in the bank? Why take a side? Why not let the Nixon-Cuomo fight play out and work with the winner?

Most importantly, how does this build the party? It’s not as if Cuomo needs Perez.

It was indicative that Perez had learned few, if any, of the lessons of 2016. The DNC should not be in the business of either tamping down progressive insurgencies or picking sides in contested primaries unless one candidate is so egregious and unacceptable, intervention is the only answer. (The Democrats have yet to produce their own Roy Moore.)

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of the House Democrats, also seems intent on constricting or scuttling altogether movements from the ground. In Cuomo’s New York, they’ve installed a candidate to primary another Democrat who was already raising money and securing the support of local party groups to take on Republican John Katko in the fall.

They’ve dumped an opposition research document on another candidate in Texas. And their chosen Democrats have lost primaries: in Nebraska, a former congressman backed by the DCCC, Brad Ashford, lost a May primary to a progressive insurgent, Kara Eastman. Two more moderates in Pennsylvania fell to challengers on the left.

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Given the progressive energy animating these contests – and the fact that economic populism has been proven to be a winning approach in a wide range of districts, rural and suburban and urban alike – why are certain national party leaders trying to control it?

Voters divorced from party apparatchiks and DC groupthink would find it odd that Democratic party leaders are so wary of the people who are engaging most passionately with politics today. With Trump as president, income inequality swelling, and automation threatening to erode most of the blue-collar work that’s left, voters – especially those who self-identify as Democrats – understand exactly what’s at stake.

They want leaders who can address their economic plight and precarity. When Trump ran for president, he proved that even the hardest of right voters have little interest in the gospel of neoliberalism that came out of the Reagan and Clinton administrations.

Rightwing voters didn’t care that Trump had once spoken fondly of universal healthcare, ridiculed free-trade deals championed by party elders, and even mocked Jeb Bush’s support for the Iraq war. Trump is a fraud, a phony populist who has actually empowered the billionaire class, but it’s important to remember his campaign torched a Republican playbook peddled for generations.

It’s important too to remember that conventional wisdom, especially that practiced by those in power, is often wrong, and that most rules of politics amount to little more than folklore invented by a professional class that would like to think they know better than they do.

These were the same people, after all, who sneered at the idea of an avowed socialist from one of the tiniest states in America running a competitive presidential campaign. They were gaming out cabinet appointments for a second Clinton administration while Trump was storming the midwest.

And now they try to tell us who can win where and who can’t. Failure isn’t as humbling as it used to be.