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Sticking with left wing examples for now, let's say there's a movement advocating for a wealth tax.
Saying, "no, only 10% of people want that," is appropriate.
Saying, "no, only 10% of people want that," and then going through that movement to find the one member who said something stupid ten years ago and bringing it up incessantly whenever people talk about wealth taxes is what I would call "active methods". An active attempt to damage and (further) discredit movements that are not popular in order to prevent that movement from ever becoming more popular.
That kind of seems like regular politics. Possibly unpleasant, but not some kind of illegitimate thing. Parties do it to each other all the times -- the left wing broadcasts MTG in their fundraisers all the time. Right wing blasts the squad.
What's more relevant to me is the question: if a movement never becomes popular, how do we distinguish between "we were discredited" from "our ideas were never palatable to more than 10% of voters"? Because I feel that many losing movements declare that, and it can't be universally the case.
I think you're right, it is regular politics. The overton window has become narrower and more harshly enforced since 2010, as the political and media class grows more uniform, and simultaneously the size of groups outside that window has been steadily enlarging. I think this is explains the feelings of persecution on both sides.
I'm not sure, sorry. In theory, you could be maximally encouraging of fringe groups (e.g. fawning newspaper coverage) and see whether they turn out to have legs, but I'd be very surprised if that ever happened.
Perhaps you could use volatility of support as a metric? If support for your ideology has strong peaks and troughs in response to events and scandals, that suggests that more people might be willing to support it depending on the circumstances. And, therefore, that the media can manipulate support with bad coverage or that politicians can manipulate support by crushing the insurgent new politician everyone is interested in. If support for your ideology chugs along at 5% for decades that suggests it's just unpopular. But this is very tenuous.
I agree, the groups outside the window feel like they are growing and should be more influential even if they are still minorities in absolute terms.
You're right the latter problem is probably untenable. But it does mean that we have to take "everyone would be a Bernie bro if the media didn't trash him" with a grain of salt.
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