There’s a polite lie we tell ourselves about loyalty. It says loyalty is virtuous, thoughtful, rooted in belief, and sustained by conviction.
It suggests that when people remain in relationships, institutions, or movements, they do so because something meaningful still exists beneath the surface. The lie is comforting. It is also wrong.
People do not stay because things are working. They stay because leaving would force an admission they are not psychologically prepared to make. Leaving requires honesty, and honesty has a way of detonating carefully constructed identities. Staying, by contrast, only requires endurance. Endurance has always been easier to praise than discernment.
This is as true in romantic relationships as it is in politics. If you want to understand why someone remains with a partner they do not like, you don’t start with love. You start with investment, fear, identity preservation, and the quiet terror of admitting that years of confidence were misplaced. Once you understand that, the modern Democratic Party suddenly makes perfect sense.
Behavioral economists identified the sunk cost fallacy decades ago.
In their study, they noted that humans irrationally continue failing endeavors once they’ve invested time, money, or emotional energy, even when abandoning the effort would be the rational choice. Casinos depend on it. Bad sequels depend on it. So do long, joyless relationships. The same mechanism applies politically.
Democrats did not wake up one morning genuinely excited to defend Joe Biden as a sharp, commanding leader. They arrived there incrementally, one rationalization at a time, lowering the bar with each step. Every election defended, every embarrassing moment reframed, every online argument fought hardened the psychological investment. Leaving now would not simply mean rejecting Biden or the party. It would mean admitting that decades of certainty were wrong. That realization is intolerable for many, so they double down instead. The sunk cost fallacy explains why people remain committed to outcomes they no longer believe in, as detailed extensively in behavioral economics research.
Over time, relationships turn into emotional real estate.
You may not like the house, but you know where the light switches are. You remember the renovations. You’ve memorized the quirks. Political parties function the same way. For many Democrats, the party is not a belief system so much as a psychological residence. Leaving would require learning new language, new norms, new social rules. That is labor. Staying a Democrat is merely uncomfortable. This explains the bizarre ritualized praise surrounding Joe Biden.
Democrats did not actually believe he was mentally formidable. They needed him to be. If he was not, then the entire structure collapses. What followed was not admiration but maintenance behavior, the same thing couples do when they keep a relationship alive by pretending not to notice the rot. Cognitive dissonance theory explains this impulse well. When confronted with conflicting beliefs, humans will often alter reality itself rather than abandon identity.
Nowhere was this more visible than in the treatment of Biden himself.
His verbal confusion, physical wandering, and visible decline were not partisan inventions. They were (and still are) observable facts. Yet Democrats responded not with concern but applause. Each completed sentence was celebrated. Each stumble was rebranded as humility. This was not respect, but instead denial. The applause, nervous. The praise, compulsory. Healthy loyalty does not require constant reassurance. Only fragile belief systems do.
Status plays an equally corrosive role. Being in a relationship signals social legitimacy. Being partnered suggests stability and desirability. That is why people stay with partners they dislike. Being single invites questions. Politics works the same way. In elite cultural and professional spaces, identifying as a Democrat functions as a status credential. It signals intelligence, compassion, and moral seriousness. Leaving the party is not treated as a political evolution. It is treated as a moral failure. Sociological research shows that group affiliation reinforces identity and punishes dissent most aggressively within high-status groups. Democrats remain Democrats not because the ideology works, but because leaving would cost them friends, jobs, invitations, and social insulation. The party has become a résumé line, not a conviction.
Psychology offers an even darker explanation.
Humans prefer familiar pain to unfamiliar freedom. Attachment theory demonstrates that people unconsciously recreate emotional environments they recognize, even when those environments are unhealthy. Familiar dysfunction feels safer than unknown possibility.
Democrats understand their party’s failures. They know the script. Inflation becomes “transitory.” Crime becomes “perception.” Border chaos becomes “complex.” These explanations are rehearsed, comforting, predictable. Trying something new would require acknowledging that the pain was not inevitable. It was chosen. That admission is more threatening than dysfunction itself.
Ideology compounds the problem.
The Democratic Party no longer operates on coherent principles. It operates on slogans and moral signaling. It cannot define foundational concepts without collapsing into contradiction. It cannot explain why cities under its control deteriorate while insisting its policies are compassionate. Yet its adherents cling to it because dysfunction has become familiar. Familiarity masquerades as virtue.
Perhaps the most powerful force keeping Democrats tethered to their party is narrative preservation. Humans construct identity through story. Psychologists refer to this as narrative identity, the internal autobiography that gives life coherence and meaning.
Ending a long relationship threatens the story you tell about yourself. So does abandoning a political movement you once championed. If Democrats admit the party is broken, they must rewrite their personal mythology. They must confront the possibility that the people they mocked, dismissed, and condemned may not have been villains after all. That is existentially humiliating. It is easier to stay with a failing partner than to admit you were wrong about who they were, who you were, and why you stayed.
Though Democrats have many examples, Joe Biden, in this framework, becomes the ultimate unlikable partner.
Everyone knew something was wrong. Everyone adjusted around it. They pretended that Biden’s condition was temporary. The public defenses grew louder as belief weakened. That is not leadership. It is a group therapy session masquerading as governance.
So why do Democrats stay? Because leaving would demand an accounting. It would require acknowledging sunk costs, surrendering status, rewriting identity, and accepting responsibility for outcomes. Staying only requires rationalization. Rationalization is far cheaper than integrity.
The brutal truth is this: people do not stay in bad relationships because they are stupid. They stay because humans fear being wrong more than they fear being unhappy. Democrats remain with a demented party for the same reason someone stays with a partner they cannot stand. Leaving would force honesty. Honesty would collapse the narrative. And narrative, once shattered, cannot be carefully reassembled.
Comfort lies. Familiarity anesthetizes. Loyalty becomes a trap. And eventually, staying becomes the most elaborate form of self-deception there is.
