I don't know that we ever did anything but accelerate towards another Trump term. Once you unleash the fash, it's hard to put that genie back in the bottle. Like we removed university professors for their research because they criticized the state for doing a genocide.
Again, there were some decent, albeit wonkish moments, but it's not like we remember Von Hindenberg for his military reforms.
Fash is vastly overused as a label and, in my opinion, that has really hurt the progressive cause. People just stop taking you seriously if you trigger a five alarm fire at every opportunity, and the word gets normalised as a result, so now when we really have fascism it's easy to dismiss concerns.
I also think that dismissing the positive progress that was made during Dem administrations as irrelevant is counterproductive. It's always easy to find more that needs to be done, but if the politicians are only ever praised by the braying mob for doing horrible things then you can see how ...
... the incentives go in the wrong direction. I used to be a radical, but after the last decade of global regression towards far right, I've turned into a radical gradualist – any progress in the positive direction should be celebrated and encouraged, because natural trend is ruin at the moment.