Democrats in Massachusetts may be in trouble. They claim their ship is unsinkable, but they are blind to the iceberg in front of them.

Democratic activists from across the state gathered in Worcester Friday and Saturday to hold their party’s convention. The winners would advance to the primary ballot in September. Of the original five Democratic candidates running for governor, two were knocked out, leaving Attorney General Martha Coakley, Treasurer Steve Grossman and former Medicare chief Don Berwick on the Democratic primary ballot in September.

Berwick, a 67-year-old physician from Newton, is the only newcomer remaining. His political brand representing a mix of Robert Reich, Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders, Berwick nearly edged Coakley by professing to be the most “progressive” of the pack. In the end, Grossman earned the state’s Democratic Party’s endorsement by winning 35 percent of the vote on the first ballot.

It’s fitting that the two eliminated candidates, Juliette Kayyem and Joe Avellone, were also the youngest candidates by far. Liberalism hasn’t had many truly new ideas since the 1960s, and the ideas it claims are new, such as Obamacare, are very unpopular in this country and around Massachusetts. Longstanding liberal ideas, such as increasing the state’s minimum wage, are being passed as modern-day solutions, but as I’ve detailed in previous columns, they just aren’t. By and large, the left in Massachusetts just keeps offering stale policies like the progressive income tax, which has failed at the ballot box more times than the Buffalo Bills have lost the Super Bowl.

Although Democrats hold every statewide office, all of the commonwealth’s seats in Congress, and supermajorities in the Legislature, Bay State voters want diversity of thought. As the Boston Globe recently editorialized, “… top Democrats including U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey have returned to an uncritical embrace of labor, and some gubernatorial candidates seem inclined to do the same. That would be a crucial mistake.”

The Globe is right to warn Democrats not to embrace organized labor too tightly, given unions’ tendency to promote policies that enrich their members at the expense of the broader public. In the same vein, the Globe continued, “Meanwhile, the issue of economic inequality remains on the table for the taking, and Democrats need to pursue a growth-oriented economic approach that goes beyond repeating longstanding … priorities such as raising the minimum wage.

Massachusetts politicians must re-focus their priorities. Some national groups, such as CNBC, continue to rank Massachusetts near the back of the pack for economic competitiveness. The next governor must both eliminate anti-growth measures such as the inventory and inheritance tax, the Pacheco Law, and prevailing wage rules, and couple that with passing pro-growth policies like reducing the tax burden and debt in the state.Antiquated rules, such as undisclosed legislative committee votes and a budgetary process that favors a few plugged-in lawmakers, also need to be tossed aside.

These policies need not be caught up in partisan politics. Eliminating, not lifting, the cap on charter schools should be embraced by liberals and conservatives alike. According to the Pioneer Institute, there are more than twice as many children on Boston charter school waiting lists, as there are enrolled in charter schools. Some unions, however, are now pushing hard to suppress charter schools and undo the progress they have made.

Whichever candidates are still in the running to become our 72nd governor must turn around the ship that we call Massachusetts quickly before it is too late.

Paul D. Craney is the executive director of Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. Follow him on Twitter @PaulDiegoCraney.