the center may be more transphobic than you think, he isn't using right wing dog or wolf whistles like Elon and Trump, he's mostly taking an anti-trans stance which might be somewhat popular and might be one of those dividing issues that keep otherwise "centrists" from voting for a Democrat (though mostly what polling indicates is voters don't care about the trans issue, because the GOP is flaming a moral panic about it, that is what remains salient for Dems of what the "other side" cares about).

yes, I was being hyperbolic - Clinton successfully ate the Republicans' lunch by being a better conservative than them, so it seems like a consistent strategy. Democrats are more interested in appealing narrowly to reliable voters, rather than trying to appeal to people who refuse to vote, haven't ever voted, or other disenfranchised non-voters, which is a mistake because the number of people eligible to vote, but who don't reliably vote, make up a very large portion (so much that they make up the largest block of voters, larger than Dem or GOP voters in most elections - a reason electoral abstentionism seems like an unlikely strategy, since a majority already abstain with no significant impact to the government's sense of legitimacy).

Partly this is an issue of Dems being elitist, they are not into populist politics and prioritizing the lower classes in their rhetoric, and part of this is just basic electoral strategy and the kind of established, expert-approved approach to winning elections.