David Leonhardt tries to give progressives some advice about how they can end their long losing streak, but he really can’t come up with anything.

Maybe the new approach should involve economic progressivism and cultural moderation, which happens to reflect American public opinion. Maybe it involves a different approach on immigration — insisting on a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants but also a slowdown of future immigration. Maybe it means announcing that fracking and nuclear energy are crucial to fighting climate change. Or maybe it involves finding more progressive candidates who hunt or talk about their relationship with Jesus Christ and have some related policy positions.

I realize that political compromise usually feels unpleasant. But I’d ask: How does losing feel?

I don’t know why it’s so hard to even imagine a popular progressive movement or candidate. First, you have to picture someone who Democratic officeholders almost universally like and respect even if they don’t necessarily agree with them about some fairly important issues. This is key for all presidential candidates, unless you have a situation like the John Boehner-led GOP of 2015. Obviously, if your own partisans hate their party so much that they want to see it Trumpified, a candidate doesn’t have to be popular with the elected members of that party.

The rest of the time, however, this is extremely important. It’s not so important that the progressive wins a bunch of endorsements, but they need to be able to lead the party, and that requires consent. Without it, not only will powerful people do their utmost to stop them, but people will understand that progressive promises will not be kept because Congress won’t go along with them.

It’s nice to have a candidate as charismatic as Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, but it’s sufficient to have someone who is widely liked and respected.

The next thing is that they can’t be obnoxious. If they’ve satisfied the first requirement, there’s a good chance they’ll satisfy this second one, too. But it’s possible to be popular only within your own partisan side of the aisle or only within your own faction of the party. A successful progressive should not be defining a whole bunch of people out of their movement or casting an air of superiority over whole swaths of the population. As many people as possible need to see them as “on their side.”

Someone who tries to follow Leonhardt’s advice is going to fail at this. I think he’s aiming in the right direction by saying that the candidate should have “cultural moderation,” but that is in itself alienating to a lot of people. It’s also fairly inconsistent with being a progressive. It’s possible to stand for things without pushing people away by insulting their morals or intelligence. It’s also possible to talk about immigration in a way that acknowledges people’s legitimate concerns without pandering to those who just hate immigrants. It’s possible to take on climate change without treating people and regions that depend on the fossil fuel industry for their livelihood as implacable foes. In fact, it’s not hard to fashion yourself a champion of those people and regions and insist that protecting their interests is one of your top concerns.

A successful progressive candidate has to transcend many of these divides rather than try to carefully navigate them. This is why I’ve talked for four years about a progressivism that puts regional inequality first, that is obsessed with revitalizing independent small businesses by breaking up the large monopolies that are crushing the traditional entrepreneurial spirit that fuels the American Dream.

This is what unites first-generation immigrants in Queens with pharmacists and auto mechanics in rural Missouri. A lot of Democrats began to grasp this during Trump’s first term, and certainly Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren understand the concepts. But they both siloed themselves on the far left. And Sanders just doesn’t have the personality or the relationships he needs to pull something like this off.

As for progressive voters, what they need to learn is that success requires them to tolerate it when their champion spends most of their time reaching out to people who are far to their right. I don’t mean that they should want their candidate to pander to people’s prejudices. I mean that they need to allow themselves to get taken for granted a little bit, because the messaging that will grow the movement can’t be tailored to them.

There are some limitations on what a progressive can get away with. They can’t adopt policies that basically require members of their own party to run fleeing in order to protect themselves. But this really shouldn’t require as much trimming and sacrifice as most people seem to believe. For those who are put at risk by your proposals, you just have to treat them like your most important constituents.You have to reassure folks that you’re going to take care of them and that the changes you’re proposing are for their benefit. Maybe sometimes this won’t be all that plausible but the effort should be made all the same. It’s bad politics to tell people you are going to screw them if you get elected.

Now, asking progressive groups to accept being taken for granted is almost laughable considering that they’re extremely committed to their goals. For a candidate to have any hope of pulling this off, they need to have pre-established credentials on the left. So, this isn’t just some script that anyone can follow. It requires a special kind of leader, and those leaders do not grow on trees. The advantage is that if someone has the trust of the left, they can convince the left to go along with compromises when they’re politically necessary. This keeps the movement from flaming out and succumbing to the first wave of misfortune that comes along.

A president can only successfully govern within the parameters of what is possible at any given time, so it’s absurd to expect a progressive president to move much further than Congress is willing to go. Members of Congress are responsive to their constituents first, and only after that to the nation as a whole. So, you can’t move Congress if you’re asking them to do things that will get them voted out of office. If that’s the effect your policies will have on them, then either something is very wrong with your policies or you’re really a message candidate rather than a serious candidate to lead a major political party. If you want to win over reluctant members of Congress, you have to work to change the minds of their constituents first, which circles back to my point about the importance of reassuring people that you’re not out to destroy their livelihoods and you have a plan for them that will make things materially better.

This is one reason why a progressive candidate can’t write off small town or rural America, or trash whole industries and regions of the country. They have to have a populism that speaks strongly to those areas, and that’s what my pitch on antitrust enforcement and revitalizing small town America is all about.

I thought Warren might run this kind of campaign, but she got sidetracked along the way. She had the basics right, and some future progressive will be able to put together the full package. Until then, there are no magical formulas that can be executed by running as half a progressive.