[jfengel]

The political party's job is to get votes. Which includes keeping the votes they already have. Giving things to one wing of the party can cost votes to the other wing.

The party is aware of the trade-offs. It goes ahead with its best estimation of what will win. Sometimes they can do everything right and still lose. One such scenario is when people would rather have the greater of two evils rather than be responsible for the lesser.

[Planktonne]

That was (potentially) a reasonable argument before the election, but the election happened and we know the results.

"We can't adopt [potentially winning strategy] because it might harm [definitely non-winning strategy]" is not a reasonable position. You don't have to adopt any specific alternative plan, but clinging to a non-working plan clearly isn't the right answer.

[protocolture]

Sure and its possible thats what happened. But looking at their behaviour, its more like they thought they could use Trump to force everyone to fall in behind them regardless of policy.

[underlipton]

The only way Democrats would have lost votes is if the "Vote Blue No Matter Who" folk weren't really prepared to vote blue, no matter who. Democrats didn't lose their base, they lost their left; theoretically, there's no leftist policy they could take on that would lose them their base, because it's their base.