Actually Democrats have a long history of doing things like that and then losing.
Look how they abandoned single payer and a public option during the Obamacare period. Then they lost the Congress immediately after.
Democrats do centrist or rightward pivots seemingly blind to the fact that Republicans will not vote for them anyway and that these actions will alienate the base. If they drew stronger contrasts and gave people a reason to vote for them, I think they would do better electorally. Sometimes it feels like they live in a fantasy world where it's still the pre Gingrich era and bipartisanship is much more of a thing.
