Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. by Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

There are 21 Democrats running for President of the United States. Each of them is trying to navigate their way through the primary by just throwing out policy ideas to see what sticks.

Most of them are embracing the extremes. They (wrongly) believe the best way to beat President Donald Trump in 2020 is to swing as far in the other direction as possible, and they are basing this assessment on approval numbers and the loudest minority of their base. In reality, it’s pretty much guaranteed that this track will only serve to alienate the moderates Democrats will need to win.

Several other Democrats, meanwhile, on the House Judiciary Committee want to hold Attorney General in contempt, and are pushing for his resignation, if not outright impeachment. Their focus on Trump’s possible obstruction during the Mueller investigation signals that they are also not ruling out keeping the impeachment of Trump idea on the table.

As well, you have freshmen in the House who are taking over the party as the de facto heads. They get the headlines, the media time, and the social media reactions to keep their very extreme ideas at the forefront.

What they are all lacking, however, is a unified message and a strategy for actually taking Trump down.

The Democrats don’t have as clear a path as they’d like you to believe. The latest economic numbers are great for him. He’s the incumbent. He has a very loyal base. They only way you beat him is to pull away from the moderates who don’t want to listen to any more of his “extreme” positions on trade and immigration. You don’t win moderates by saying “You know those tax cuts you got? We want to undo those and actually make you pay more.” Which is exactly what would happen if many of their policy ideas were put in place.

All it takes is coverage like that of Brian Sims in Pennsylvania, the insane state representative asking for followers to identify teen girls praying outside an abortion clinic and harassing older women who oppose abortion. All it takes is more coverage of Ilhan Omar seemingly supporting Hamas over Israel.

All it takes is more open hostility to Christians and more demands that we allow doctors to leave newborns on the table to die right after birth?

These are the positions you see taken in the Democrats party. They aren’t fringe politicians taking those positions, either. You see state officials, people in Congress, and other mainstream pundits saying this is all okay.

It’s not going to beat Trump, though. The American public averages out as a moderate voting force. If you go too far one way, they will abandon you. That is a large part of why Trump won once and why, if the Democrats keep this up, he’ll win again.