I know centrist and moderate are dirty words here on DKos, but maybe it's time to resurrect them, and not just because we want the support of moderate Democrats. We also need the moderate Republicans.
There really are moderate Republicans, you know. You don't meet them on-line very often any more than you meet moderate Democrats on DKos. But there are a lot of them. They will vote for sanity, if it makes sense to them. If they can believe that it's the best thing for the country even if not themselves and if they believe that it's safe. They're mistaken about a lot of things (they are Republican, after all) and they're afraid of a lot of things, but they're not stupid.
A moderate Democrat who spells out exactly where they intend to take the country and is believable has a chance to not only pick up the moderate Republicans in 2016 but a chance to realign the politics of this country for a generation.
That realignment was started by Obama. From the start many of us have been unhappy with his governing style, his reaching for compromise at every turn. It seemed unnecessary and made it harder to get things done. I still believe that but I start to see what he was doing. He was trying to occupy the center, and he's done it. That's one of the things that pushed the Republican center of gravity so far to the edge. They had no where else to stand. Now they're standing on an Antarctic ice shelf of crazy.
In American politics revolutionary change doesn't come from revolution. It comes from making the other guys your guys. That's the only way it's done.