Appealing to the left is more effective because that razor thin margin of right-wingers who “can go either way” are super low information. They’re not voting on policy, they’re voting on vibe.

The left comes out for policy and authenticity, when a candidate actually demonstrates that they’re unwilling to play within the political frame that the right has created that’s only a good thing for their chances. People are less and less likely to simply “vote blue no matter who” anymore, voters see how that strategy has failed to produce meaningful results.

When you poll Americans on policy the majority are in favor of progressive policy, even in red states like West Virginia. When people were polled on the original $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan (before it was gutted by “moderates” like Manchin) public support was overwhelmingly positive for things like climate funding, child care assistance, healthcare reform etc. BBB was essentially the progressive platform. The fact that Democrats are ignoring that kind of data and instead chasing people on the far right who aren’t realistically going to vote for Biden anyway is absurd.

The question should not be “How do I make my policy more fascist to look more like a Republican” but instead “How do I best communicate convincingly that I’m behind these popular working class policies and not just using them as a cynical political ploy. How do I rally my party to support local, working-class progressives during their primaries instead of letting AIPAC run rough shod over them even if it costs Democrats a seat.”

Progressives bring out both groups for Dems in the generals – the democratic base, independents and the low-info vibe voters.

When progressives don’t get sabotaged by their own party they have been shown to flip red and purple regions (ex. Summer Lee in PA). They simply are better at appealing to working class majority and talk about real policy plans, not just scare mongering about brown immigrants etc. Even Sinema ran on a super progressive platform. Of course she’s a lying POS and not actually progressive at all, but that’s how she got elected in AZ, by playing as a progressive.

Jessica Cisneros was within a percentage point of beating Henry Cuellar during his primary in Texas (one of the only forced-birth democrats left) and instead of backing Cisneros, Pelosi deliberately went to prop up Cuellar. This was a month before RvW got overturned. This is the kind of dumb shit that happens when Democrats try to hide from their base and why they are always fighting low voter turnout and need to resort to “pied piper” strategies of propping up extremist GOP opponents to make their own look more palatable.

When the left comes out, they win. Conservativism is simply less and less popular as boomers age out, the battle for Democrats is with apathy not with trying to find some impossible balance of fascism and progress.