This must be the famous 7th-dimensional chess where Chuck Schumer explicitly says he's chasing after mythical moderates at the expense of blue collar Dem voters, but this secretly isn't a blatantly centrist position.
That's great, but nobody knew that besides GAF residents and policy wonks, because
a) the candidate was an unpopular hawk who rarely extolled their progressive platform (and to be fair rarely got the chance to extol it given the nature of the debates that were hijacked by Trump antics)
b) the platform was not actively conveyed to voters. The last thing most normal people want to do is go out of their way to research policy positions, hence the use of campaigning and advertising to convey these positions. Instead the reliance was on disgust of the other candidate and the horrible "I'm With Her" messaging.