Anyway, 19 little kids are dead, and I don’t expect anything meaningful will be done to prevent the next 19 little kids from getting killed. I know most of the complex logistical, legal, cultural, and political reasons why our system is incapable of preventing this. I leave those explanations to other authors. I ask instead what anyone with power in this country—a group that has intentionally excluded young people from its ranks—plans to do about those reasons. And I invite the reader to think about the implications of the fact that those people with power cannot answer my question with anything remotely credible. What are you going to do about the fact that we all know you can’t do anything?"Try to get 10 Republicans to support us" is not an answer.
There is a ratchet problem in that the best possible outcome of our system (best, most optimistic, not going to happen), is that under Democratic control no actual liberal legislation gets passed except occasional sweeteners in the budget, and under Republican control, centrist Democrats join with Republicans to make their legislation slightly less horrible.
This isn't an argument that it doesn't matter who wins. Even a a cautious, inept, fearful and lazy Dem executive is better and geriatric Dem control of Congress is better than the existing alternative. If harm reduction is the best we can do, that is still something.
But I'm an old Advanced Politics Knower and while you can yell at "The Kids" all you want, "what you going to do about it?" needs to be a question you can answer, and if you can't, don't be surprised when people conclude what you are telling them to conclude.