It's magical thinking to expect any kind of long-term change while also acknowledging that "bad people" want power and sometimes win, as then they're in power and get to repeal any of the gains made by the progressives. It's what we've seen historically, with the vast majority of welfare states getting dismantled (UK and Britain are particularly big examples).

We live under Capitalism, which reproduces our society, creates all the goods we use, and it's most important aspect is profit - you can't run a business by ditching profit and going for morals or whatever after all. This is what governments are fundamentally there for to support and maintain, which results in them structurally being affected by certain laws of capitalism that you cannot simply reform such as wealth naturally concentrating in the hands of the few, tendency of the rate of profit to fall over time which inevitably leads to wars in order to restore it, how labor reserve (unemployed people living in poverty) are necessary in order to drive up profits by creating artificial competition to the job market and thus reducing wages, etc.

These things you cannot reform out of much like how you can't abolish gravity by claiming it doesn't exist anymore. It has a direct influence on politics, and is why progressivism is such a lost cause given how any wins in making a welfare state will just inevitably get reversed by "bad people" getting into power once rate of profit drops too much.