It’s a coalition, and like all coalitions, it has a wide variety of sorts in it.

Yes, I know. What I’m pointing out is that more than half of those 250m+ people are in effect ideologically disenfranchised by the Dem leadership actively preventing candidates that better represent their views from being nominated, often from even running for office.

The two party system allows them to shift further right though. The further right the GOP goes, the further right the dems can go to try to vacuum up disaffected voters. I’m pretty sure parts of the GOP coalition know that too, and it factors into their strategy of getting some of their way even when they lose.

I’m aware of that too. It’s part of the ratchet effect:

ar It’s about casting the widest possible net though, not lasering in on any particular subset and trying to make them happy.

Tell that to the Dem leadership. What I’ve been complaining about this whole time is that the Dem leadership snatches defeat from the jaws of easy victory by refusing to actively appeal or even LISTEN to anyone except that tiny group and the “vote blue no matter who” crowd who’s almost literally incapable of not supporting the party no matter what.

Expanding the net leftward would make it possible for them to win most major elections, including every presidential election, in a landslide from now and until the GOP either change their politics back to something sane or manage to manipulate elections so much that voting has no effect.

I don’t think anyone is perfectly happy currently

The owner donors and whomever else profit from the status quo probably are.

Our solution is to try to make our positions more popular with the public, though

Progressive and further left policies are already much more popular with voters than the center right to right wing ones of the Dem leadership.

Not to try to pressure the party apparatus to appease a certain inner faction

You’ve got it backwards: most of the actual Left has become an outside faction due to the party apparatus’ refusal to listen and demands for blind obedience causing resentment and alienation.

and pretend it won’t cost them with others. It will cost them elsewhere

I’m doing nothing of the sort. I’m saying that listening to the left like they used to before the Clintonites took over would gain them many times more voters than it would cost.

if there’s one thing I’ve gauged about Biden, it’s that he doesn’t like taking big risks.

Except for stubbornly gluing his tongue to the boots of a genocidal apartheid regime even as the majority of the people of the world and indeed the country are condemning it. Doing so is an enormous risk, one that I fear has already cost him the election and by extension the country its democracy.