WASHINGTON, D.C. Mar. 9 (DPI) – In the wake of the Democratic Party’s lightning-fast realignment that delivered a Joe Biden resurgence on Super Tuesday, doubts remain that the American Left can assemble a broad-based moderate coalition to oust Trump in November.

A column by David Leonhardt in The New York Times – long the house organ of the Left – posed one of those searching questions that’s making “Progressive Purists” squirm: Why can’t the Left win?

Even with Biden’s success last week, there are signs that Bernie Sanders and his hard-core supporters aren’t going away, and the fight for the Democratic nomination could be decided at the party’s convention in Milwaukee this summer.

Readers came back with more than 700 comments, the majority of which asserted various themes, including that the Left imposes too many ideological tests, moderate Democrats are themselves oligarchs preserving the status quo, the Right cheats, and the Right resorts to more electoral trade-offs to ensure that their side gains and keeps power.

Three of the most popular comments attached to Leonhardt’s column underscore that Leftists at least recognize their problem:

I have this odd admiration for Evangelical voters. The pretty much sold out their ideals concerning personal morality and supported Trump all the way. In return they received Supreme Courts justices they like, a rollback of LGBT rights, a wide expansion of government support for religion, etc.. It was a deal with the devil but for now it is paying big dividends for them. Most of the progressives I know would be horrified by such a “sellout”. Over at The Nation all sorts of progressives are saying they will sit out the election rather than vote for Biden. Their personal moral purity counts more than winning. It is the same thing that cost Clinton in 2016. It is my biggest worry about 2020.

Replacing Trump with a true progressive doesn’t appear to be in the cards. So I’ll settle for a moderate democrat if it increases our chance to keep the house and take back the senate. First things first.

We can’t seek a revolution when our house is burning down. We first have to put out the fire. And we have to play to win. I’m a progressive that seeks change, but I’m also a pragmatist and know that change comes gradually, and that people are resistant to change that is forced on them too quickly.

For me, AOC’s rollout of the Green New Deal encapsulates everything wrong with today’s progressives. She attended a student sit-in at Nancy Pelosi’s office to accuse the Speaker–the person most needed to bring a bill to the floor–of laziness on the issue. Then she holds a splashy press conference to announce the plan–basically an in-your-face declaration of war. Did she get a coalition of experts, organizations, and other institutions on board? No. She didn’t even get her fellow Congress members on board, thanks to her insistence on tacking a wish list of social justice issues onto her climate bill. Everyone–including the general public–who would’ve been needed to pass the plan were alienated, ignored, or insulted. The rollout was such a catastrophe the Senate scheduled a vote on it just to watch Democrats run and hide, which was something I’d never seen before. And all because the progressive torch bearer in Congress couldn’t understand that she lives in a country where not everyone thinks like her, and where compromise is necessary in order to move forward. Instead of being politically savvy, she wanted to be pure to her cause, and as a result, she lost. And so did the country.