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I have no objection to the Democrats’ nominating an oysterman for a Senate seat. When I led our party’s effort to recapture the House in 2006, we made a point of recruiting candidates with “authentic” broad-based appeal. But that strategy, which flipped 31 seats during my tenure, and claimed 21 more in 2008, was predicated on a substantive premise: We needed to allay voters’ worries that Democrats were weak on national defense and culturally out of touch, vulnerabilities born from previous elections. If we could do that, the door would open for us to make the campaign about the GOP’s corruption, which ranged from “The House That Tom DeLay Built” to Iraq war contracts.

Today, the “Bernie bros” and their fellow travelers in the Democratic Socialists of America seem intent on repudiating the proven success of that strategy. When the DSA attempts to turn safe Democratic states and districts a darker shade of blue, Democratic candidates in swing districts are put at a distinct disadvantage. In New York’s 13th Congressional District, a young socialist, Darializa Avila Chevalier, ousted Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. She did it by winning over the district’s newly arrived urban professionals while losing the black and Hispanic voters she claimed to champion. Those marginalized communities, like most voters around the country, don’t have the same tastes as the gentrifying parts of Harlem and upper Manhattan.

What happens in the 13th District doesn’t stay in the 13th District. The midterm election this year should be about the Trump administration’s corruption, which makes Mr. DeLay look like a choirboy. But in the name of “authenticity,” the DSA and others are saddling the Democratic Party with nominees whose wildly unpopular positions will protect Republicans from having to pay the price of Donald Trump’s corruption and economic incompetence.

Already Denise Powell, a bright star perfectly positioned to flip a district in and around Omaha, Neb., where I visited recently, is being unfairly labeled “DSA Denise” by the state GOP. It’s no surprise Republicans have picked up on this strategy: The DSA’s cultural agenda adds baggage for Democrats already saddled with a poor party image from the Biden era. Candidates in competitive districts have to spend time and effort differentiating themselves from the DSA’s agenda when they should be focusing voters on Mr. Trump’s corruption.

Ultimately, this is about policy. It was socialists who led the charge to defund the police, open the borders, abolish prisons, release violent criminals onto the streets and degrade the flag. We know those are electoral losers. In 2020, after protestors chanted to defund the police, Joe Biden was swept into office without coattails. After Mr. Biden instituted an open-border policy, we lost control of the House in 2022 and the White House and Senate in 2024.

Red-to-blue election swings matter. The 52 combined seats we moved in 2006 and 2008 gave President Obama the majority he needed to pass both the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial reform. In the Senate, he depended on the support of Nebraska’s Sen. Ben Nelson, a moderate Democrat from a ruby-red state. President Biden’s ability to pass the clean energy provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act hinged on the vote cast by West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin. Today, both those Senate seats are controlled by the GOP, Mr. Manchin having chosen not to seek re-election in 2024 after being threatened by the Bernie bros.

This isn’t advanced algebra. If you want to raise the minimum wage, as Democrats did most recently after we took the majority in 2006, you need to flip more red districts. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, veterans of the Navy and Central Intelligence Agency respectively, were elected to the House in 2018 by claiming seats previously controlled by the GOP. Each was elected governor of her state last year.

If the Bernie bros were serious about growing jobs and wages, they would support candidates touting substantive ways to help families cover the mortgage or the rent, secure their retirement, and ensure no one is a single medical emergency away from bankruptcy. But they aren’t extolling the candidacy of former military helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett, who is running to unseat a GOP congressman in New Jersey, or of retired Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, who is running for an open seat in South Carolina.

Already, the socialists’ efforts to distract from what should be our message on corruption have had an effect. For months the Democratic Party’s generic advantage widened while the nation focused on Mr. Trump and the Republican Congress. Our lead has narrowed amid recent attention to DSA-led primaries. In November, a continued focus on defunding, decriminalizing and decolonizing will highlight cultural issues that alienate many Democrats, not to mention a huge swath of independents (who make up a record-high 45% of the electorate) and disenchanted Republicans.

Moreover, the next presidential election will be determined by roughly 500,000 voters in the states that determined the last three presidential elections—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If any of the prospective Democratic presidential nominees with a realistic chance of winning general-election campaigns for Senate or governor in those states want to campaign this fall with DSA members from New York City, I will gladly cover their airfare and lodging costs.

We can all agree that authenticity is a key to victory. But if Democrats are going to enact a hopeful, change-oriented agenda, we need to recruit messengers whose biographies burnish our message. Everyone opposed to the Trump agenda should champion candidates who embody the American Dream and are committed to restoring it. To win in the places where it matters, Democrats need to emphasize the common ground they have with a majority of the electorate.

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