I recently came across a video of Bernie Sanders from the early 2000s where he argues that most people agree on certain ideas like "the government should work in favor of the people and not in favor of the richest 1%" or that "we should increase funding for education"; which is something I agree on. And that if someone tried to run a campaign on benefitting the richest by sacrificing the lower and middle classes, maybe the 1% would vote for them, but it wouldn't be enough to win them the election. And that so the right uses issues like abortion to separate people into pro-choice or pro-life, or gay rights to separate into LGBT+ communities and homophobes, etc.

What I don't understand is, in practice, how can you continue to advocate for social issues that you care about if you're afraid of division. How do you advocate for gay rights if you're trying not to alienate working class homophobes? How do you advocate for women reproductive issues if you don't want to push working class pro-lifers away?

I'm a conservative Democrat and pretty much agree with the Blue Dog platform.

And just as important, how much of it was motivated by the campaign ads from AIPAC?

All of these groups provide Dems with tax-deductible ways to support voter engagement work in swing districts.

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/voter-turnout-key-districts