(snip)

If there were a poll of pundits, it would show a vast majority believe the best way forward is "middle muddled moderation". The goal, according to them, is to move the "purple people". The politically androgynous folks in red districts who have a bluish side. Trump voters who might be disillusioned or disgusted enough to switch. They warn that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are radical! Too radical! "They'll scare the purples back to red", they say. Suburban ladies that the Dems are counting on to vote against the p***y-grabber will panic, stay home, just making sure the leaves are raked from their autumn lawns.

(snip)

It fails to recognise that things had gone wrong before Trump and aside from Trump. If you're not looking at the real problems, you can't get to real solutions. Instead, you take polls, come up with an assortment of issues, have the pros write slogans for them, and the candidates go out and sound like focus group phonies. Which they will be.

(snip)

The Democrats no longer had an ideology. They continued to triangulate. They gave up territory step by step. With each compromise, the Republicans just went further to the right - at least on economic issues. The "centre" doesn't have its own location. As they moved right, they pulled it along. Today, Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon would be condemned by their own party as members of the dangerously radical Left, alongside Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

It should be blindingly obvious and irrefutable, as well. There is no compromise with Republicans. Obama didn't know it, but as he was being inaugurated, their leadership got together and determined to oppose anything he offered. They were committed to his failure, even if it hurt the country. His healthcare plan was a Republican plan and he offered compromise after compromise to get even one vote out of them. It never came.

(snip)

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/democrats-win-180802105300786.html