The Democrats are fucked right now, and they need to figure out how they're going to cut the Gordian knot they find themselves in.
Their popularity is tanking, but it's not as clear-cut as that article implies. It's not just tanking because "democrats want them to stake a stronger stand against trump", it's also tanking because a lot of their policies and behaviors are reprehensible and wildly unpopular even among many of their constituents. Supporting violent gang members being allowed to remain in the US in a blind "all anti-immigration stances are bad" backlash, or going full-steam-ahead on the "men in women's sports" thing even as it's demonstrated time and time again that the result is neither safe nor fair. Coddling people like Mulvaney who make even honest trans women recoil in horror, and putting up with the recent "trans women are biological women" nonsense from some of the radical trans activists.
But if they try to step back to regain their more moderate supporters, they're going to lose their activist and radical supporters - as we've seen when they dared to even suggest they might not be entirely on the side of the Palestine protestors.
Right now, there is no winning move in the game for them.