Also worth pointing out that, while America may be 249 years old, no one would consider it an empire for the majority of that time. Its debatable, but I would argue we didn’t really reach an empirical level of power until the late 40s, when we started taking over what was left of the British Empire’s influence over the middle-eas5.
I mean, here’s a poll published 2 months later stating that Democrats want the party to be more progressive. Couple that with the fact that the 62% of Democrats want to throw the centrist leadership out on its ass and I’m not sure, “people want moderates, actually,” is a reasonable conclusion anymore.