Sure, they "could". But do they want to?

The Five Best Ideas From the Democratic Debates 
Democrats can win the mainstream with this agenda.

Are Democrats moving too far to the left? That’s what Bret Stephens, David Brooks, and other right-leaning pundits are saying after last week’s presidential debates. In some ways, I agree. But the dichotomy between left and right—the idea that you have to go one way or the other—has grown stale. The best course for Democrats, in elections and in government, is to develop a new agenda that synthesizes progressive values with conservative wisdom. They can start by adopting the best ideas from the debates. Here are some of them.

So, this is an interesting read. What it does is pretty much replaces the mainstream liberal thinking on five major areas (Healthcare, Economy, Immigration, Environment, Family Values) with an idea shared by the minority of candidates (or in some cases, just by one). In other words, it picks and chooses and creates the perfect "mainstream" Democrat Frankenstein monster made up from various parts of each candidate. Picture Biden's head, Warren's torso, Buttigeig's arms, Harris's leg's and Sander's hair, or something like that.

The first idea is the thought process of creating a "medicare for all" government option to compete with private insurance, rather then ram "medicare for all" down people's throats and threaten to do away with private insurance. Of course, this is nothing new. The same flaws that exist still exist. Without massive amounts of subsidies, incentives, and a willingness to lose money, the Government simply does not compete well with the private sector. Never has. Never will. Which is why it is actually important to do away with private insurance if you want to push a single payer government plan.

The second idea is to stop pushing socialism, and instead push "healthy capitalism". This of course is nothing more and nothing less than the liberal idea that you need more government intervention into the economy. Higher taxes on business, higher taxes on capital gains, more regulation, and of course a push to punish the well known evil industries like "pharmaceuticals".  Again, nothing new here. But the problem isn't the plan, but the semantics. Many mainstream Democrats simply like calling any liberal economic idea a Democratic socialism. It's out there. You cannot get away from it. Trump will use it regardless of the candidate.

The third idea is to stop pushing for open borders. The author wants them to forget about decriminalization of immigration crossings and other ideas being presented, and instead focus on the underlying issues of Central America. He suggests merging the immigration problem with foreign policy in the area. Certainly he would not get any argument from Republicans, who have been pushing for aid to these countries that can be specifically used to help prevent the migration northward for some time. But I think he underestimates the long term goal of Democrats to increase immigration into the country, and create more incentive (not less) to have people come here.

The fourth idea is a modified carbon tax that includes a carbon credit. Enough said. Almost nobody in this country seriously wants to have the government monitoring and controlling their carbon use.

The last idea is for Democrats to push values, religion, and patriotism. Seriously. He believes that Pete Buttigeig talking about religion (and assigning it liberal values) is a winner. I seriously doubt it. Not sure which Christians are listening to Buttigeig, but I doubt many are going to have their mind changed about what makes a good Christian, because a Democratic Presidential nominee is making a case. Same would be true for other values and the overall concept of patriotism. People have hard core ideas about what constitutes religion and patriotism. That's not going to change because liberals want to redefine the words to their liking.

Bottom line is that this is an interesting article. The author is basically making the case that the future nominee should abandon pretty much every mainstream liberal cause, and defer to the ideas of many of the people who are probably going to be long gone from the process by the time we get too far into the primary voting. He's probably right that the nominee would do better pushing the more "traditional" liberal political talking points, but I don't see that being the case in 2020. They are just too "woke" to go back to their previous roots.