I agree with all of this but the last part (maybe).
What I meant is, the more centrist Democrats or the right-wing of the Democratic party if you want, are stuck somewhere between running on
their platform which is based on liberal ideals and facts on the one hand, and the desire to not lose the support of the cool college kids with Bernie shirts who like Sweden on the other hand.
A lot of points of a centrist-liberal platform are close to the consensus of the respective experts on different issues.
A market based economy, free trade, no tariffs, progressive taxation, a reform of a healthcare system that's based on multiple private insurance companies regulated by the government + subsidies for people in lower income brackets to achieve universal health coverage, subsidized higher education to improve upward mobility and a basic welfare and social security system to decrease downward social movement, basic environmental protection regulations without flirting with a planned economy, pro-immigration but somewhat merit-based + vetting etc isn't really a controversial platform.
I mean aspects and details of such policies are debatable from an ideological perspective but pragmatically "it works".
Nobody can say it destroys America, that goes against what almost anybody in economics or political science can agree on.
They could be closer to classic economic liberals in Central and Western Europe (who are more conservative on social issues but I think that's not relevant to my point), like Germany 5 years ago or so. They (US Dems) will obviously put more focus on some social issues etc but that would still be (social) liberalism. It's also an absolutely winnable platform in the US.
But then you also have people who think we should be like [what they think is Europe (it isn't)] and it's single payer or bust, college needs to be 100% free for every American, we can introduce a $15 minimum wage on a federal level, the government should arbitrarily force enterprises to have wage caps and female/muslim/retard/black quotas, to live in the US is a human right, massive problems with refugees in Europe is fake news by Breitbart and we should step up our own refugee game, we need a 90+% top tax rate, everything can be provided and planned by government agencies if only the rich paid their fair share, true Islam is peaceful, we should have the same worker-co determination as France etc
And that's not more centrist vs further to the left, it's policies based on facts vs la-la land. Add the irrational SJW influence which is closer to some far-left dems than many liberals like to admit. In reality many Dems are somewhere in between. Hillary also flirted more with progressive talking points than she should have simply because she ran against Bernie.
