Ask Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema if Democrats were really “in power.”
They were. They wielded power through people like Manchin and Sinema.
Democrats have the opposite problem: in recent memory they’ve only ever had the narrowest of majorities in Congress, and they’re a bunch of cats on a good day, so there’s always a few Democrats in vulnerable seats that will break with the party in order to maintain their “outsider” image with their purple district voters.
Well, that's all the party needs to do the only thing the party is for. Being the pawl on the ratchet.