of trumps districts that voted dem. Those new Dems give us the majority - they are not purist, blue wavers.

The are cautious pragmatists who want to be re-elected - and we desperately need them.

All of them, as far as I know, I being careful not to alienate those trump voters who voted blue in 2018

Full list: 2018 midterm election seats that flipped

https://www.axios.com/full-list-2018-midterm-election-seats-flipped-34d99826-0929-41c6-a1f0-e4d02861c835.html

They ran mostly on Health Care.. per Nancy's suggestion.

Most voters are not far left. If you overreach, you lose the middle which you need to beat trump. I've seen this happen the the Dems lost big. So the question is, do folks want to beat trump or just push their own agenda which could hurt?

Someone who supports and fights for gun control? Someone who believes in and supports fighting climate change? Someone who fights for workers against corporate abuse and fights for closing the wage gap? Someone who fights for universal health coverage? Etc., etc.

I'm not willing to sacrifice any of those things on the altar of "moderation." Moderates have been used as an excuse too fucking long.

Far left is all the freebies candidates talk about. Moderates are not for the freebies when we get no details. It scares them away. You need to concentrate on who can win the Electoral College which is state by state. That's the game. Concentrate on that.

That's how they diminish liberal Democrats.

left so be it. I want a liberal candidate that will stop the looting at the top, raise taxes on the rich and narrow the income gap. We also need to get going on a single payer public option and work toward a national universal health care program.

and I believe most voters will see her the same way.

Too many of these political analysts want to keep framing our politics with labels which no longer work.

Moderates do not want their lives to be in constant manufactured crises. They do not want their children to be murdered, They want to be able to take advantage of modern medicine without becoming impoverished, they want regulation of big banks. They want big corporations to obey laws. They do not want massive gaps between the income of rich and poor.

The want survival of the planet, they want clean air, clean water, and don't want themselves, their children , and their grandchildren to be poisoned, or plunged into debt in order to obtain an education.

Affordable health insurance is not a revolutionary concept, budgeting on a national level for health care delivering heath care the way many advanced nations do already is not a revolutionary concept. Working together to achieve the well-being of our citizens is not a revolutionary concept.It is what well-organized and well run nations do.

The right of individual citizens to have control over their bodies, and there personal lives is just basic human rights

pretty sure it wasn't just progressives (who make up less than half the party).

Bottom line is you need both progressives and moderates...and both progressives and moderates will have to compromise some and coalesce around whomever the nominee is...whether it's Sanders, Warren through to Biden or another moderate.

Not a single candidate who successfully flipped a GOP seat in 2018 was endorsed by Sanders' "Our Revolution" or AOC's "Justice Democrats".

So I find your statement false.

asnd presidential general if we nominate a candidate who can't connect with moderate voters...health care the ACA was the number one issue...and Waren and Sanders are running on MFA...that is a big issue if either are the nominee. Vote blue no matter who... let's kick Trump out!

Moderates are struggling at this level more because they still think reaching out to Republicans is a good idea than their policies. Of all of them, Bennett has the best tone but he’s paying a price for obscurity.

their policies that are not moderate enough...

I don't not believe all the current candidates can beat trump. Why? It's an Electoral College race which is state by state. Most polls we see are national and not state by state.

Sounds like a good slogan!

This article is just another red herring attempt to frighten Democrats away from reasonable responses to 4+ decades of trickle down run rampant -- pure BS.

Don't fall for the scare mongering folks.

is disturbing...AA voters must vote for whoever mostly white progressives select? And moderate are expected to do the same? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Nominate a candidate who can win, not the purest but perhaps unelectable in the general candidate...I vote blue no matter who but you simply can't count on picking a nominee who only works for one part of the Democratic party...a minority part at thatas the mid terms clearly showed.

That’s a non-starter if you’re trying to convince me or many of those who aren’t particularly thrilled with an almost octogenarian who has been a top tier player within the party the past 40+ years.

I will vote for whoever becomes our ultimate candidate in the GE, but i’m sure as hell not going to vote for someone in the primary just because he’s familiar, a nice guy, or has a plurality in the primary polls.

I’m pretty done with center, moderate or whatever you want to call it regarding D candidates. In the 70s I thought of myself as center left because that’s where my views aligned. My views haven’t changed since then, but today i’m almost a communist to some and definitely a “socialist” according to my sense of some Ds here at DU.

“How do you like my paying off college debt boys and girls?”

“Hey Bernie how much does it cost and how do pay for it?”

“How would you like free health care boys and girls?”

“Hey Bernie what is the plan to do these things?”

“How do you like free health care boys and girls?”

Still pandering worn out false memes like the "Democrats left us", "far left", "coastal elites" and "free stuff". A risky proposition to put prime concern on mobilizing your base? How about all the Democratic loses when the DNC/DLC was pushing centrist purity? Detailed proposals have been made and getting those out to the voters should be the main concern, not giving weight to anti-progressive pandering.

Or at least our tent should be big. On our end of the political spectrum nobody can expect to get everything their way but be prepared to concede points to others who may have voted for Democratic candidates for decades.
We need to stop the put-downs of good Democrats as being DINOs or Republican Lite just because they are not Liberal enough for us.
If we do not stand together we will fail, and the stakes are far too high for that.

He didn’t pull the people to the left. We have been here waiting for our representatives to get with us. And, there are a whole lot of us, and we’re growing.

Which is why the hard left always fails to oust Republicans from office.

Left in position but not in anger seems more likely to work.

... sometimes it also means quantity. Elections are won with votes, not the loudest voters.

All I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense to spend extraordinary efforts going after a handful of voters, when half the time and effort can be used to convince thousands more voters to support Democrats.

She is going to many small towns that most people don't know exists. That is why I believe she will be our nominee, she is Obama-like in that regard.

The state of Iowa isn't Berkeley or Portland, and Warren's winning.

No bloc of Democrats should be written off. Not progressives, not moderates. Respect all sides and earn their votes. Too much fear and re-fighting campaigns of yesteryear is a bigger risk.

The point is, run a stellar campaign and win the election! Labels are going to be alleged all the time and dirty tricks and voter suppression are inevitable. Organize, hone your message, and win!

They are not the same thing. He is exactly right that

But, ahem, that's the thesis of What's the Matter with Kansas, the brilliant 2004 book by Thomas Frank that is as true today as it was then, and it exactly explains why some the industrial Midwest voted Trump. Yes, we all know that racism and misogyny and voter suppression and Clinton's campaign mistakes and Facebook propaganda produced by Russian troll farms and etc. all played a role in the 2016 debacle -- but so did the fact that Trump was able to persuade a not insignificant number of people who voted for Obama to also vote for him. And he did this by pretending to hear and understand and have plans to address their wage stagnation, their job insecurity, the hollowed out manufacturing base in their home towns and the clear lack of a reliable path to the middle class even after 8 years of solid growth. A solution to all of that will not be found by aiming for the mythical center voter and doubling down on neoliberalism. These voters want to hear plans for change, not plans for a return to the Obama years that for better or worse, left many behind (especially if you did not live on the coasts or in thriving big cities -- and even there you have an affordable housing crisis and homeless college students).

Since the great recession, only the top 30% has recovered their wealth loss (and then some!). That means 70% of us are still worse off than we were when the recession hit in 2007. Great chart available here: https://www.apnews.com/df1ca4016d27405791c10eb5772c06a4

And it is not just wealth, it is also income. The top 1% are hogging up most of the incomes gains. Again, a super chart is available here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-inequality.html?module=inline (scroll down to the second chart to see it in motion).

People feel this lack of fairness, they feel this insecurity, they see and feel that most of the best opportunities are out of reach unless they are already in the top half of the income scale. They are looking for bold, progressive economic proposals, not more middle of the road "rising tides lift all boats" bullshit.

My two cents.

there is a demand that the Left move toward this perceived center but Moderates are never asked to move a single inch toward the Left?

Is it the assumption that the Left doesn't matter at all; that we need to suck it up and embrace the status quo because we have nowhere else to go?

If we have a candidate who is not as "moderate" as some people want, will that make them embrace Trump and his open criminality?

Is it a simple reluctance to change?

Hope that if our side is as mild as possible that the other side will be nice?

So true... Meanwhile the GOP pushes the Overton Window farther and farther rightward.