Whether Democrats lose rural counties 65-35 or 80-20 (thanks, as it turns out I actually do understand math, believe it or not) is not going to come down primarily to ideology. It's going to come down to who voters feel is on "their side" or who "gets them."
How exactly do you think JBE got ordinary Republican voters to think he's on their side? If you think his pro-life and pro-gun positions didn't benefit him enormously you aren't paying enough attention to what motivates conservative voters.
Voters can be surprisingly flexible and forgiving to candidates that they like or connect with on a personal level. Just look at how conservatives voted for Trump without reluctance. While I don't doubt that Sanders and Warren would lose badly in Kentucky and Louisiana (and so would Biden), that doesn't mean that they can't win over voters that Clinton couldn't in states like Michigan and Wisconsin, even if those voters are somewhat to their right. Clinton didn't lose because she was "too far left", that's just revisionist history, since she was nominated because many saw her as the "electable" candidate. (It is just as silly to say that she was "too centrist" or "too much like a Republican", for the record.) She lost because voters saw her as robotic, a career politician through and through, and someone who would change their opinion based on polling numbers, and who would throw people under the bus as soon as she got elected. Was that characterization completely fair? No, but her difficulty expressing authenticity was a very real problem for her.
Now it's my turn to say it again: If Democrats run a purely anti-Trump campaign, or do not run on a clear message of their own and appear wishy-washy and inconsistent, Trump wins. I could say more, but we're clearly going to have to agree to disagree. You may know local Kentucky politics better than I do, but nationally Democrats have gone down this path before and have bought into the usual narratives before as well. It doesn't tend to end well.
Where is your proof on any of this? Everything you're saying is conjecture -- meanwhile, Wildman's points are based in hundreds of opinion polls as well as a huge set of election results, including last night. That
half of voters thought Hillary was more liberal than they were, and only 35% said Trump was more conservative is not irrelevant at all. Biden has led Trump by larger margins than Sanders/Warren in 99% of polls taken. Those recent NYT/Siena polls hint that the difference could put one of them over the top and sink the others.
There's something to be said about how authenticity is earned by politicians from voters, but to act like you can take any positions you want as a Democrat and expect to get the same results... well, it's not based in anything we've ever seen.
