One thing I think people are regularly confused about is just what kind of opposition such politicians face. There's a tendency to say (by reporters, bad consultants, pundits, etc.) that such Democrats have to be more "moderate" to win. Ok, that might be true for some issues, but it often isn't true about a lot of them.
Roughly speaking, "moderate" Dems aren't supposed to vote for "free ponies for all" because swing voters they face hate free ponies for all. But people actually like free ponies for all! Of course they do! Free ponies!
What really happens is that the Chamber of Commerce basically says, "if you vote for free ponies for all, we will spend a lot of money telling voters that you love Muslims and have 'San Francisco values' (whatever that means)." So those politicians vote down the Free Ponies bill, and sage pundits observe that, well, of course they did, because voters in West Virginia hate free ponies and much prefer tax cuts for rich people. After all, West Virginia is a red state!
The Big Money often wins on the issues by threatening (implicitly at least) to go against politicians for entirely unrelated issues. Failure to support free ponies is giving into blackmail, basically.
