You raise some good points. Athough it seems to me that many of the “moderate” Democrats that I’ve seen aren’t much better than their liberal opponents (Joe Baca comes immediately to mind).
And I misremembered the 2010 AG race— Harris indeed beat Cooley with a narrow plurality in a multi-candidate field, not in a one-on-one runoff (since the jungle primary didn’t start until 2012). I think that it’s unlikely that Cooley would have come within 5% of Harris, much less within less than 1%, in a one-on-one runoff.
Believe me I’m not defending the moderate Democrats.
They are, in many important respects, total dolts. But they believe in capitalism and private property and public order, albeit with lots of taxes, regulations, public employee unions, amnesty, affirmative action to feel less guilty about it. Those things are costly to people like you and me, but but they’re not incompatible with reality and if you like the weather in San Diego or work in media or tech, it’s maybe even worth bearing.
The radical leftists though, believe quite sincerely in things that just have no bearing on Planet Earth. They ever got the reigns it would be Great Leap Forward levels of chaos. But the moderate Democrats will vote for them in general elections until the gangs are actually raping their daughters on the way home from school (see: they are dolts). The jungle primary maybe staves that off...