That’s the thing, left policy is overwhelmingly popular when you don’t attach it to a democrat and you don’t complicate it with means testing or market solutions or anything else.

Even republican voters like the idea of “free healthcare”. But you say “free healthcare, for people who meet X Y Z requirements” and 90% of people will assume that this program won’t apply to them.

You say “tax credits for people with children, after you fill out 5 forms and prove you make more than X but less than Y, applied to this scale”, and even people who meet that criteria children will assume it won’t help them. You just tell them “every working family with a kid under 18 gets a $3,600 check”, they’ll support it.

The democrats are miles to the right of their voters. This situation is further enforced by the media, who push the narrative of the “median voter” or “moderate republican”, who is half way between democrat and republican; who will vote for “up to 40K college loan forgiveness for people with STEM degrees who were born on a prime numbered day and operated a business in an underserved neighborhood for 3 years” (Kamala’s 2020 policy) but thinks that “free college” would be a step too far.