No matter how consistently NARAL’s candidates lose to vehemently pro-life, down-the-line Republican politicians, they continue to attack successful Democrats who do not go along with whatever the new litmus test issue is for being “fully pro-choice.” In the closing weeks of the 2016 election, NARAL was running victory laps with its chosen candidate, Katie McGinty, apparently deciding abortion rights was a strong way to close out a campaign in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, Pat Toomey was elected to a second term, a seat that nearly cost Democrats and the nation repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and just last month served as the deciding vote on the Republican budget.

Ignoring faith voters will always be abhorrent from the perspective that elected officials ought to represent and speak to all of the people they represent. But that is not all that is at stake. At some point, the Democratic Party, advocacy groups, and pundits will have to answer to voters and their own constituencies. Women, who are far from uniformly pro-choice, may begin to ask if it is worth putting policies like the ACA’s coverage for maternal health at risk just so the Democratic Party can take symbolic stances on policies that have no reasonable expectation of passage in the short-term (like repeal of the Hyde Amendment).

At some point, years after the legalization of same-sex marriage, LGBT voters and allies who care about LGBT rights may wonder why Democrats are content to push the Equality Act, which no Democrat believes can pass in the short-term, while neglecting a more viable path forward with evangelicals and others who are willing to support LGBT rights if reasonable religious freedom protections are included. Does the LGBT American who is worried they can get married on Sunday, but fired on Monday, know this?

African American and Hispanic Democrats may ask why their party is willing to take symbolic, extreme positions on social issues—positions many Hispanic and African American voters do not even support—when voter disenfranchisement and deportation of Dreamers are at stake. Does intersectionality really demand that the Little Sisters of the Poor be held to provide contraceptive coverage to celibate nuns even if the political cost of that policy is the election of Republicans who are opposed to the vast majority of policy objectives supported by those who embrace the idea of intersectionality?

Ideological consolidation works well for D.C. advocacy groups and politicians who raise money off demonizing their opponents, but it costs the people they claim to defend. Democrats can continue to seek ideological purity and wait for the day when the Republicans are so deplorable that Americans have no other choice, but that day will not come soon enough for the voters they represent. The moral vacuum that is Donald Trump, and the fracturing that is occurring in the Republican Party, offer Democrats an opportunity to regain what they have lost among religious voters, and build a lasting majority. They can do this through returning to the faith community with direct engagement, rhetoric, and policy commitments.