For years, the conventional wisdom is that third-way Clintonism was the flag that Democrats must rally under. That while California, New York, and other blue bastions could afford to host some candidates that scuttled the orthodoxy, generally Democrats needed to stay away from policy positions that would cause most midwesterners and southerners to clutch their pearls. To that end, Democrats needed to be economically conservative, socially moderate, staunchly patriotic, and religious— essentially, Democrats needed to be 80’s Republicans.

This is all well and good as an experiment, except it’s not an experiment anymore. Democrats’ trust to win the 2018 midterms and take back as much of congress as they can are almost completely contingent on moderate-right candidates like Conor Lamb and Doug Jones. History bares this strategy out in very uncertain terms — for every Conor Lamb and Doug Jones victory (the latter, mind, only narrowly defeated a suspected pedophile and doesn’t have a stellar voting record in congress), there is an equivalent Jon Ossof-esque loss. Meanwhile, the base that the Democratic party has usually pandered to, working-class progressives who lean socially left, is getting impatient and frustrated with the national party’s unwillingness to concede even slight structural, organizational, or policy victories to the pundit-named “Bernie wing.” Even labor support for the Democratic party is waning thanks to baffling anti-union policies from the DNC at large, making success in these havens of elbow grease and blue-collar pride even less likely.

Not only is there an obvious lack of reason in trying to get Republicans to vote for a near-but-non-Republican when Republicans are on the ticket, there is an increasing amount of research that midwesterners and southerners are receptive to a new kind of ideology. This is evidenced by the election of Democratic Socialists of America-backed Democrat mayor Melvin Carter in St. Paul, MN, and Lee Carter’s strong win over popular Republican Jackson Miller in Virginia’s House of Delegates. And it’s not only Democrat die-hards and millennials who are excited by progressive policies like universal healthcare and campaign finance reform (which they exceedingly are); swing voters are more excited by progressive positions than the milquetoast, moderate Republican Lite™ “All the Regulatory Capture with Half the Hate” platform that lost Democrats every branch of government in 2016. Say what you will about “Most Popular Politician” Bernie Sanders — and Clintonites have, repeatedly, on Twitter — but he had and still has crossover power that no other Democrat does.