In a Pennsylvania congressional district, Conor Lamb defies the odds to beat his Republican opponent in a bitterly fought special election and the message is clear: Democrats must hug the center. Dozens of strategists take careful note. A hundred news commentaries bloom.

In a New York congressional district months later, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stages an extraordinary Democratic primary upset and the wisdom inverts: Leftward lies glory. The strategists regroup. The commentators rewrite.

Michigan delivers one verdict about Democrats’ best direction and then Massachusetts hands down another. What happens in the party’s gubernatorial primary in Florida is contradicted by what happens in its gubernatorial primaries in Rhode Island and New York. And so it seesaws, over and over, as we rapt observers yearn for a pattern and persuade ourselves that we’ve found one only to have it vanish before our eyes.

That’s because we’re staring at the wrong thing. Intent on some ideological takeaway, we miss the human moral. This year’s victorious candidates, like so many winners before them, aren’t prevailing simply or even mainly because of the labels they’re wearing or the precise points on the political spectrum to which they can be affixed.