You want a 50 state strategy or you want a purist party of dems

[vi5]

20. Again....I get all of that....

.....I get that we need to have Dems from red states. I get that we need to allow dissent and compromise. Our problems are just more complex than an either/or, black and white situation like this poll choice describes.

Yes we need red state dems and allow them to vote their conscience.

No we don't need to give them outsized power over legislation.

Yes, we need to be better than Republicans. No we don't need to always cede the narrative and assumptions to them like we always do.

What we need is for Democrats to fight harder and for them to be better salespersons. THAT is our biggest failure. We've been too content to sit back and go "Well thats Republicans fighting dirty. We need to be better than that and the voters will reward us." I think it's obvious at this point that is not the case. If gerrymandering in states with Republican control is screwing us, then we should be doin the same in blue states, not simply sitting back and whining about it and going "Oh well. Gerrymandering. Nothing we can do about it."

If presenting something as a black and white issue is going to be a hard sell for people with constituents in more conservative districts then those politicians need to get out there and sell better. And if they need the tools to do so then we should have a party infrastructure that gives that to them and gives them the support they need.

And we should also not be confusing "voting in their constituents best interest" with "voting in their donors best interest" which is another thing we too frequently do.

Having this be some overly simplistic choice between "purity" and "reality" is just as childish and naive as you are accussing one side of being. Many of us are fine with a "big tent" and understand it's necessity, but also don't want us just falling back on that as an excuse for failure or inaction as we too often have within the Democratic party.