I think there is not much of a middle left, though, at least in the classic political sense. The existence of a large, stable "middle" was a feature of the era of centralized mass media in which institutions could reliably manufacture consent at industrial scale.

So I think "appeal to the middle 80%" is a lost dream of a bygone era. Instead, you make a list of things you're definitely 100% going to do even if everything thinks they're impossible/insane (in the spirit of "you can just do things"), then you do them or die trying.

And was this not the source of the split happening now, the failure to do the promised things? What I'm saying is, this isn't a split over who speaks for the middle -- it's a split over the failure to do one thing (i.e. rein in the deficit) in favor of doing other things.

If anyone wants a good platform (tho I don't care about the DPF thing now since I sold my truck... still, would support it):

IMO the truly grim news here is that democracy is not very good at long-time-horizon projects, & it's an especially bad system for mitigating big risks that have "slowly, then all at once" characteristics over long time horizons (fertility collapse, currency crisis). In light of this, "represent the 80%" is the basically the opposite of what you'd want to do, because the 80% are the main group that won't move before it's too late.