As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez swept into Congress on the Blue Wave of the 2018 midterms and joined ranks with the most diverse group of Democratic congressmen and -women in history, I was rather pleased with my fellow humans. ‘This is progress,’ I thought to myself. Women, Muslims, women who are Muslim, women of color, LGBTQ+ people; nearly everyone had some degree of representation in the halls of power. Nancy Pelosi, or ‘Nancy’ as Donald Trump likes to call her, was in charge in the House, and cages were going to be rattled, the status quo shaken up, change was in the air! Elizabeth Warren made me choke up a little during her CNN town hall the other night when she told the story of meeting a little girl during her first senatorial campaign and saying to her, “I’m running for Senate, because that’s what girls do.” What a great image, and a wonderful story! I was impressed. Warren impressed me. As does Mayor Pete, and Biden, and Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar. They’re all impressive people, intelligent people. They’re all people I would vote for in a heartbeat. But they all have one fundamental thing in common: they’re running on policy ideas. And that’s why Donald Trump will win the 2020 elections.

Let me explain.

What Donald Trump understood a long time ago is that politics isn’t about policy positions, or grand visions for the nation, or even an idea about how to make the place so many people call home just a little bit better. That’s all secondary, if it’s given any consideration at all. Politics, to Trump, is entertainment. The people who voted him, in his mind, bought tickets to the Donald Trump Show, and he has to give them the performance they paid for. The obvious and oft-stated fact is, Hillary Clinton was more qualified than Trump by several orders of magnitude to hold the office of President. But the one thing she lacked was showmanship, the ability to perform for the crowds. Is that the very definition of populism? Sure sounds like it. Isn’t populism bad? Yes, generally it is preferable that candidates run on policies and plans rather than slogans and gut feelings. But, as people in California know all too well, sometimes you have to start a fire to prevent a worse one from burning down your house. But which Democrat can start that fire? The sad truth is, none of them can. Sanders might be able to bring some life to the fight, maybe go a few rounds against the president, and while any Democrat is better than Trump, Sanders is just Trump in the opposite direction.

The worrying trend among Democratic candidates is the complete inability to shamelessly pick a position and stick to it no matter what, which is key to any successful candidacy. Trump has been saying the same three things since he took office and nothing has made him divert from his message. A Democrat holds a rally today and the audience profilers detect a lack of diversity, that same Democrat will be apologizing and promising to do better for the next three days. Ideological purity will be the death of the party and the birth of Trump’s own G.O.P. Democrats, at least the Sanders/AOC wing of the party, are impatient, zealous and believe that the change they want to see in the country has to happen now, and everyone needs to fall into line to make it happen. Unfortunately, the kind of change they (and, frankly, I and most sensible people) want to see takes time, years if not generations. It took 143 years to go from the end of slavery to the first black president. And while it’s high time for a woman to be elected to that office, I can safely say that there is no woman in the Democratic field today who can defeat Trump.

The question that needs to be asked is this: do we want a candidate who represents our values one hundred percent and is the embodiment of our ideology? Or do we want a candidate who may be flawed, who may have a skeleton or two in their closet, but who can win the election? I believe most people want the latter, but supporters of the former are numerous enough to rip the party apart from within and prevent an electable candidate from emerging in 2020. Trump just has to keep doing what he’s been doing and watch the Democrats tear themselves apart before a bruised and bloody challenger emerges who can be knocked over with a light shove. It’s time the Democrats stop snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and learn to compromise with one another, to put a candidate in place who understands the new world of campaigning in America. That’s one change that came faster than anyone expected, and Donald Trump was the catalyst and main beneficiary of that change. It’s time Democrats catch up and clue in to the new reality, or Trump will conquer in 2020.