I think one thing that libs didn’t understand is that to meaningfully win an argument there had to be enough held out so that the other side would stay engaged. You don’t really win if your opponent disengages and just walks away. Institutions like NPR, the NYT, Harvard, the CDC, the AAP, etc. will tell themselves they’ve ‘won’ and defined an issue or regimented public opinion even as they’re relegated to shrinking, restrictive feedbacks loops that are necessarily to maintain the fiction of their authority.