While 2018 is largely being written as the year of ascendant progressives, there's another small but overlooked group of Democrats attempting to march to Washington using a script that's more tempered and less flashy.

Instead of Medicare for All, they call for ways to lower health care and prescription drug prices. Rather than abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they advocate for enhanced border security without separating families. They're less likely to dwell on their disagreements with President Donald Trump than they are to separate themselves from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

As the national party lurches leftward, they're arguably the real insurgents – bucking the trends inside the tent to try and win in far-flung, reliably red places that have long abandoned the Democratic brand.

They're called Blue Dogs – a waning coalition of moderate to conservative-leaning House Democrats who stress consensus over conflict with Republicans and have been battling extinction ever since 2010 redistricting produced more partisan congressional maps and their party has steadily hardened its liberal ideology.

Reduced to just 18 members on Capitol Hill today, this band of Democratic centrists is aiming to add at least a half dozen new lawmakers to its depleted fold this year, providing members an opportunity to reassert their waning influence in what they hope will be a majority caucus.

Blue Dogs came to be in the mid-90s when some members said they felt they had been "choked blue" by the extremes of both parties. After 2008, they boasted a coalition-high 54 members. Two years later, half of them were wiped out in the GOP wave.

Now as the party feels increasingly emboldened about its chances to flip at least 24 GOP seats to capture control of the House, Blue Dogs say it can't happen without them.

To get to 24, the party is heavily targeting the 25 Republican House districts carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016 as prime opportunities. Unless they completely run the table in those, they'll need to add more traditionally Republican seats that were won by Trump to reach a majority.

That's where the coterie of Blue Dogs factor into the equation.

"To win the majority, there's no liberal seat out there that we need to win," said seven-term Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, a Blue Dog, during a recent briefing outlining the group's prospects.

If congressional control ends up being decided by a single-seat margin on either side of the aisle, the Blue Dogs would wield new power over the governing agenda, becoming instant swing votes for both Trump and Democratic leadership to pursue.

The Blue Dog PAC’s chairman, five-term Rep. Kurt Schrader of Oregon, walks down the House steps. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)

The Blue Dog Political Action Committee has endorsed 20 general election candidates so far this cycle and the PAC's chairman, five-term Rep. Kurt Schrader of Oregon, says he expects half or more to win, depending on the strength of the Democratic wind in November.

"They have to run a mistake-free campaign in order to win. That's just the real world for these candidates," Schrader said.

The six best positioned for victories are mostly in their 30s and 40s, sprinkled from New Jersey to Kansas, and running against Pelosi remaining as the Democratic leader.

"That gets them entre to be listened to," Schrader explained on the inevitable question on Pelosi, who has vowed to become speaker again if Democrats retake the House. "If they don't answer that question correctly, then they're written off in these [Republican] seats. If they answer that question correctly and they can localize the election, they're not anti-Trump, they're for North Carolina-7 or whatever the district is, voters will listen."

Schrader characterized the race in southern New Jersey's 2nd Congressional District as already "over," with Blue Dog Democrat Jeff Van Drew the likely winner in the open seat contest to replace retiring GOP Rep. Frank LoBiondo.

Van Drew, a state senator, is a strong favorite against Republican Seth Grossman, who has called diversity "a bunch of crap and un-American" and struggled to raise money. Even before Grossman secured the nomination, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee complained about the quality of the recruits in the district. The largest House GOP super PAC isn't even bothering to run ads there.

"To win the majority, there's no liberal seat out there that we need to win."

But Van Drew is likely to be a counterpoint to liberal stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley when they all likely arrive in Washington together next year. As a state lawmaker, Van Drew opposed making New Jersey a sanctuary state protecting residents in the country illegally and fought against a minimum wage hike to $15 that some Jersey Shore businesses complained would be devastating.

Five Blue Dog contenders are in genuine toss-up races, according to the latest analysis by The Cook Political Report .

They are prosecutor and veteran Brendan Kelly in Illinois, former gubernatorial candidate Paul Davis in Kansas, Marine Corps veteran and energy entrepreneur Dan McCready in North Carolina, assemblyman Anthony Brindisi in New York and former CIA operative Abigail Spanberger in Virginia.

Schrader, who described Davis as a "robot" when it comes to making fundraising calls, predicted he would defeat Republican military veteran Steve Watkins in the open seat race in Kansas' 2nd Congressional District to replace retiring GOP Rep. Lynn Jenkins. The eastern Kansas seat was last held by a Democrat a decade ago and Trump carried it in 2016 by 18 points.

But Davis is emphasizing infrastructure funding and lowering prescription drug prices as areas where he would work with the other side of the aisle. Davis, like most Blue Dogs, said he won't vote for Pelosi for leader, but that hasn't stopped Republican attempts to tar him as a "rubber stamp" for the San Francisco liberal.

In New York's 22nd Congressional District, Brindisi is billing himself as a Democrat who stood up to his own party's corruption in Albany and is fighting spiking cable company rates, hyper-local issues that fall far outside the poisonous national conversations. A late August Siena Research poll found Brindisi tracking just ahead of first-term GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney, 46 percent to 44 percent, elevating her to one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the country. Last month, Trump became the first sitting president to visit Utica, New York, since Harry Truman in 1948 to boost Tenney. He captured the district by 16 points.

"Hopefully we put Claudia right over the top where she belongs," he said inside a ballroom at a DoubleTree by Hilton hotel.

A July Civitas poll found the 34-year-old McCready up 7 points in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District over Republican Mark Harris, a former Baptist pastor who upset Rep. Robert Pittenger in a May primary. McCready's first television advertisement of the general election shows him serving overseas and being baptized in the waters of the Euphrates River that transitions to a clip of him back home walking out of church with his family.

Schrader praised McCready for running a "picture perfect campaign," where he's built a 6-to-1 fundraising advantage over Harris, who lacks the advantages of incumbency. It's led forecaster Larry Sabato to crown McCready the favorite heading into the homestretch.

Kelly, in southern Illinois' 12th Congressional District, has a similar profile to McCready but faces a second-term incumbent in GOP Rep. Mike Bost. In a district filled with white working-class voters, Kelly has also drawn comparisons to Rep. Conor Lamb, whose special election victory in Pennsylvania earlier this year provided a template for how Democrats can win in Trump country.

Kelly filmed an entire advertisement inside a church, where be boasts of "fighting corrupt Republicans and Democrats" as a prosecutor and has highlighted opioid addiction and the onslaught of money in politics as issues he'd champion in Congress.

Bost won his 2016 election by 15 points, but a New York Times/Siena College poll taken last week found Kelly within 1 point of the Republican.

Second-term Republican Rep. Dave Brat, who famously took down former Majority Leader Eric Cantor, also won his last election by 15 points. But in Virginia's 7th Congressional District, which includes suburban Richmond as well as surrounding rural areas, Spanberger is eating into his natural GOP advantage.

Republicans must be unsettled at the trajectory, given that Speaker Paul Ryan's Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC dropped a blistering television advertisement last week accusing Spanberger of teaching at an Islamic school that was a "terrorist breeding ground," information that was gleaned from a confidential private security clearance document from her CIA work.

The U.S. Postal Service is launching an investigation into how Spanberger's personnel file was released to a GOP-affiliated groups. Meanwhile, a New York Times/Siena College poll this week found Brat holding a 4-point edge over Spanberger, who has run a commercial lamenting the endless dissonance that dominates cable television. "Congress is too partisan," she declares. "At CIA, I served under Republicans and Democrats. ... Changing Washington means choosing new leaders of both parties. That's why I won't support Nancy Pelosi or Paul Ryan."

Not all Blue Dogs made it to the final hunt.

An aid watches House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi speak while waiting for a U.S. Capitol subway train. (Brett Ziegler for USN&WR)

Four of the group's endorsed candidates failed to emerge from their primaries, all having been upended by progressive female contenders.

In Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District, former Rep. Brad Ashford fell to the Medicare for All champion Kara Eastman and in Texas' 23rd Congressional District, prosecutor Jay Hulings lost to Gina Ortiz Jones, a lesbian Filipina-American Iraq war veteran.

While recognizing the lure to the left for some in his party, Schrader said flatly, "I think those people will lose their general election. ... I just don't think they have a very good shot."

The Cook Report currently rates both the Nebraska and Texas districts as "lean Republican."

Ironically, the smaller the margin of a new Democratic majority, the more leverage Blue Dogs would have, assuming they add a half dozen members or more to their coalition.

The first test for the Blue Dogs' spine will come in voting for a leader.

Schrader says if his Blue Dogs don't follow through with their commitment to voters to oppose Pelosi, they will be writing their own electoral death sentence.

"If they don't do that, they'll be here one term," he says.

But despite Pelosi's steely confidence, he's convinced "she won't emerge as the caucus' choice. It's a safe bet."

Cuellar didn't go as far as Schrader but said the next Democratic leader "has to be somebody strong ... to temper down the more progressive folks to make sure that we come up with something that is good for all of us."

Pressed on how he could be so sure about Pelosi's fate, given the lack of a realistic alternative and her uncanny survival skills, Schrader replied, "She can't win unless she gets to 218."