To judge by Twitter and cable news, the Democratic Party has become a raging leftist cult of socialists hell-bent on transforming the U.S. into Venezuela. But what if that’s wrong and the media are wildly misrepresenting the party, which remains quite moderate?

The reasons are simple. Right-leaning media like to lavish the lion’s share of coverage on the radicals of the Democratic Party—to paint the entirety of their opposition as out-of-step cry-bully socialists. But the left-leaning media bear responsibility as well. The same journalists who decry “alternative facts” seize on every Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Ilhan Omar tidbit with Gollum-like zeal.

Yet it’s not clear that the social-media warriors they’ve elevated to pop-star status are the least bit representative of the party. As Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota told Politico: “Suddenly an entire party is being branded by the perspectives of two of its members, who represent 1% of the caucus.” The rest of the Democratic freshmen are less visible not only due to clickbait bias but because they are busy creating legislation or holding town halls in their districts—that is, doing their jobs.

In the midterms, the gains that won the Democrats a majority were driven by quieter pragmatists in suburban and exurban districts. Candidates backed by the mainstream pro-business New Democrat Coalition won 33 of the 40 House seats that flipped from red to blue. Compare that with the Justice Democrats and the Sanders-esque Our Revolution, who didn’t manage to convert one seat. As for the messaging, the Third Way informs us: “No Democrat in a majority-making competitive district ran even one ad on free college, a federal jobs guarantee, expanding Social Security, or a passing a nationwide $15 . . . minimum wage.”

Yet many Americans remain worried that the Democrats are readying to Make America Unrecognizable, and the party shares some of the blame. They’ve hardly shouted themselves hoarse decrying socialism and have let it hinder the pragmatic idealists among them. If Democrats want the privilege of governing, they need to assert more effectively the values that center the party in every sense of the word.