In today's modern political era of polarization, mega, ultra high partisanship you're not going to change many hearts. It is said that politics is the art of the possible. Getting what is possible and putting what isn't on the back burner is wise politics. You may be able to take only a few steps forward, toward you achieving your goal by going slow, but you're moving closer all the time.

It's when you over reach, try to do the impossible that the people get angry and throw you out to where achieving only a few steps forward toward you goal becomes impossible.

You're correct, first one must win elections. As a loser, whether in the primary or general, making changes becomes impossible. Unless there is an outside force, outside of the two major parties pushing for it.

The ideal situation would be to return to an era of more cooperation between parties. But that isn't about to happen in the near future. So what a party needs to do is recognize that huge group that's in-between the two major parties. To read them as to what they'll accept and what they won't. This is a big and growing group as more and more people become dissatisfied with both major parties. Push your agenda to the limits of what they'll accept, don't go over or they'll throw you out. Gain your few steps, stop. Then come back next year for a few more steps, stop. Then come back the year after and so on.

People laugh when I talk about comfort zones. But elections are lost when you take these in-betweeners out of their comfort zone. They rebel. It's hard to know when to stop and when to push more. The trick is not to get these people angry at you.

Get them angry, you get wave elections where you get thrown out. 1994,2006, 2010 and 2018 are examples. That's four wave election recently. The last wave election prior to these was in 1948. Slow and steady will eventually get you what you want, lurches gets you thrown out.

It's high past time that we start electing Americans to congress and the presidency who put America first instead of their political party. For way too long we have been electing Republicans and Democrats who happen to be Americans instead of Americans who happen to be Republicans and Democrats.