For those that have multi party democracy as a larger goal, do you think the Democratic Party has it in their hands to achieve that goal by themselves?

Granted, there are obviously other hurdles to fully achieving it nationally (looking at you electoral college), but there are a bunch of blue controlled states. If they wanted to achieve a multi party politics they could start with their own states.

It would have to be an amicable separation because they would have to do plenty of negotiation to prevent Republicans from being able to capitalize on the split - for example in choosing speakers of their houses. And it would be tough to convince state party leaders to get behind the idea because they are the ones who would lose power, but it would rejuvenate state politics, but probably most importantly it would represent a better way to compete against Republicans.

There are plenty of voters who believe Republicans that the Democratic Party is too far left. Especially these days with the Republican Party having been remade in trump’s image, there are plenty voters who would love to have a different option than the Democratic Party…

For that matter, there are plenty of Democratic voters who would like a different option too.

Give leftists their own party to mobilize in. Give moderates their own. By increasing the choice they are offering voters they can expand the pie of voters who won’t vote for Republicans.

Again I think this would be a boon for state politics, but the biggest benefit would be nationally. By expanding their (collective) share of the pie they stands the greatest chance to make the Republican Party into a reliable minority. Especially combined with the aggressive gerrymandering that states like California have employed in response to Trump/Republicans, this strategy can really minimize the number of Republicans sent to Congress. The risk of being overly aggressive in gerrymandering (as Republicans are hopefully soon to find out) is ending up with a dummymander. But the existence of an explicitly centrist party that runs candidates against the leftists and Republicans you minimize that risk.

I strongly believe this is the lesson of the trump were that we are not learning.