The part that worries me is that it seems that the Dem's didn't learn as to why they lost, instead of doing some real soul searching, they have gone further left
You have to recognize where you're coming from here. For you, the right answer is for Democrats to move to the right. That would be like suggesting conservatives have to stop being conservative the next time they lose a election.
Moving to the left may be the right answer. Voters did not think in policy terms, on the whole. And as far as I'm concerned, accommodating the reactionary illiberal wave is not.
Similarly, the "problem" with the Republicans is not that they are too conservative. (Establishment guys, *perhaps*). Whatever this is they have going on right now can't be described as conservative. Trump's politics can't totally be described as fringe politics, although he has appeal to fringe groups.
I think talking about this in terms of left vs right does not apply to Trump and what happened in this election. I predicted back in May when it was decided it would be Trump vs Hillary that this was going to come down to an insider vs outsider and those nationalism vs globalism. Despite all of his warts, Trump represented change, and that is what voters wanted in this election. For the Democrats to be successful, they have to come back to finding policies that help average working families, and that seek to help Americans first (not illegal immigrants, Syrian refugees, or others around the world). They have to realize that big-government solutions such as Obamacare and other regulations are hurting many businesses, and when businesses are hurting, it trickles down to individual citizens. They cannot continue to demonize so many groups, including businesses, police officers, and the little guys in flyover country. By re-electing Nancy Pelosi to be their leader in the House, they are simply choosing more of the same, when they had the right guy that would have been a better messenger to address the aforementioned gaps I just referenced in Tim Ryan. I honestly don't think the left understands why they lost this election yet, and if you can't identify the root cause to a problem, you are not going to come up with the right solution to fix it. Maybe by 2018 they will have figured something out.