Dems are pretty much the same but have been dragged to the Left a bit.
I expect the Dems to get dragged much further Left over the coming cycles, though.
I think there's a ferocious debate about this topic right now, though it's mostly out of the public eye.
On the one hand you have people like Cheri Bustos, a Democrat from IL who won a landslide election in Trump country by appealing to the center. She argues that the Republican brand has been so toxic that Democrats can reclaim the national majority by avoiding wedge issues like abortion and focusing on things like jobs and the economy, which appeal to everyone. She's one of the people the Democratic Party put in charge of party strategy. She's adopted the old GOP strategy of "growing the tent" to make room for people who don't necessarily agree on every issue, but can at least agree the Democrats should be in charge and the Republicans shouldn't.
On the other hand you have people like Bernie Sanders, who isn't even a Democrat, who argues that voters aren't energized by middle-of-the-road safe policies. Obama won by starting a movement. Trump won by starting a movement. Ordinary safe boring politicians get ignored, so people like Sanders and party vice chair Keith Ellison have argued that the path to power for Democrats is to move left. They want bold policies designed to solve real problems, like universal healthcare. They make splashy speeches, and Bernie draws HUGE crowds by being outspokenly left of center.
The problem here is that the national party is basically trying to accommodate BOTH of these strategies, where they seem practical. Centrists can win in PA and aren't going to lose CA as a result. Bold socialist ideas were almost as popular in Trump country as were Trump's white persecution policies, and for similar reasons. But the result of this mixed message is that if you put 100 congressional Democrats in a room, they won't really agree on what it means to be a Democrat. If the politicians can't agree on what the party stands for, why would we expect voters to have any idea what the party stands for?
The Republicans, by contrast, had a consistent message. After they lost everything in 2008, they unified behind simple ideas like tax cuts for the rich and "repeal and replace" of Obamacare, and they basically ignored everything else. Even Republicans who didn't necessarily agree with those policies publicly parroted them for the cameras, and the appearance of unity was attractive to voters because it was simplistic. The central unifying vision of the party was to oppose everything Obama wanted (healthcare, stimulus, gay rights, national parks, equal pay for women, you name it) and it didn't matter if a particular Republican congressperson actually agreed with Obama, they publicly had to fall in lock step. That lock step led them to recapture every branch of government and gave them complete control over all aspects of America. They rule the world today.
Democrats lack that kind of discipline, nationally. They let individual elected officials represent their home districts, which of course cover a wide range of the spectrum, and the blue dog caucus and the hispanic caucus and progressive caucus are each allowed to promote their own ideas within the party. That's good small-r republican representation, which is great, but it doesn't win national elections.