While the media plays up the Ocasio-Cortez progressive types over and OVER….
Thew fact is ?
Democratic voters , on the whole, ARE in the middle and THAT is where they will win….
The middle person will sell themselves more than ideology….
That seems to be the best way for Democrats to get the Obama voters back from Trump and the Republicans
Mr. Trump is in the White House in large part because of the crumbling in 2016 of three so-called blue-wall states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate in more than two decades.
In 2020, if the rest of the electoral map is unchanged, with Mr. Trump winning the swing states of Florida and Ohio, Democrats understand that their most promising path back to the presidency is to resurrect the blue wall. Mr. Trump carried the three states by less than 80,000 total votes, so small fluctuations in his support or opposition would be pivotal.
Christopher Borick, a political scientist and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, called 2016 a “lightning-in-a-bottle” victory that will be hard for the president to duplicate.
But, he said, Democrats are in danger of creating the conditions in which it could happen.
“A more left-leaning candidate opens the door for Trump,” Mr. Borick said. “If you want to lock up Pennsylvania for a Democrat, the more moderate Democrats are the key.
Some Democratic strategists said it is much too early to rule out any of the 2020 hopefuls as unable to defeat Mr. Trump in Pennsylvania, where disapproval of his job performance is 54 percent, with 42 percent approval, according to Gallup.
“I’m not going to sit here and say there’s a Democratic nominee that can’t win Pennsylvania,” said Jason O’Malley, a party strategist in Lancaster County, a Republican-leaning region.
Coleman Lamb, a senior adviser to his brother Conor, said a candidate’s personal qualities mattered more to voters than ideology. “I don’t think the only way to win is someone who proactively goes to the middle,” he said. “I think it’s more someone who is authentic, who’s saying what they actually believe and think.”