This from the very smart Ed Kilgore...
"Bernie Sanders and the ‘Win Big or Go Home’ Philosophy of Progressive Change
...Nonetheless, the attraction of Bernie Sanders to impatient progressives who embrace the Big Bang Theory should be obvious. The only way to discipline Democrats and achieve maximize progressive gains after an electoral victory is to have an indelibly clear and inflexible idea of progressive goals — in short, a series of litmus tests. Sanders has been laying down the same litmus tests, basically involving linear extensions of New Deal and Great Society programs in every direction, for decade after decade, no matter how lonely the task might have been or how many tempting and interesting ideas were percolating elsewhere. He's "progressive" in the sense of believing America went largely off track in the 1960s and needs to go back and pick up where the march towards Scandinavia left off. And as the Cooper-Drum exchange demonstrates, the "milquetoast liberals" of the baby-boom generation can only respond with a record of accomplishment that pales next to that of FDR and LBJ (particularly when you forget the many compromises those liberal lions actually made). It all begins to sound like a silly and stereotypical dialogue between "idealistic" youth and cynical old people, when it's really a judgment call with enormous implications for the immediate political future.
I think we'll hear more of this argument if Donald Trump nails down the Republican nomination tonight and Democrats begin to dream of a presidential landslide and a congressional conquest to go with it. What might Democrats get done before the inevitable midterm backlash occurs? And what if that backlash leads to the Right's Big Bang in 2020? Bazinga! "
http://nym.ag/1UwTaj0
