Mark Schmitt ran a generally muddled analysis of the Sanders campaign’s importance and the future of progressive politics today.  With “Sanders, the Windows 95 of Progressive Politics”, Schmitt kinda mucks up the piece right out of the gate.  Windows 95 was one of the most successful software programs in history by nearly every measure – a stable, inexpensive, GUI operating system with backward compatibility (sounds dull, but people lined up to buy it and many graph inflection points, sometimes known as hockey sticks or knees, ensued).  If his desire was to show the kids that he’s hip and knows that OSX is better than Windows, he should have picked one of the dud launches – 98, 2000, Vista – rather than the one that truly transformed the computing game for hundreds and hundreds of millions of people – when Macs were an expensive, failing niche product.

But not the point.  Though kinda, yeah, since he’s trying to make the case that Sanders – the person who gave political voice to Occupy, mobilized 12 million voters, raised stunning amounts of money from human beings, turned a protest or conscience campaign into a reform movement within the Democratic party, and revived issues once thought to be dead, impossible, or non-starters – I have to repeat here since that got long, he’s trying to argue that Sanders is actually holding back a burgeoning left/progressive agenda.

But the post is titled words, so here’s what weird and worn (Bold is, as it should be, Schmitt):

• “What will a post-Sanders progressive agenda look like? The first stop will be the official party platform. But for all the work and squabbling that go into them, platforms have long been throwaway documents.” I appreciate the honesty – “write whatever you want! They’re just words, it’s junk anyway.  We’ll print ten thousand copies and then throw them out.” (If true, however, why isn’t this what Clintonites call a no-brainer?  Why bother fighting about the committee appointments and pissing Sanders supporters off?)
• “He has never had the kind of influence with his colleagues that he found with the grass roots this year, in part because he never defined himself as a Democrat.” I’m surprised Schmitt didn’t try to be hip with “identify” instead of “define”. But Sanders did identify himself with the words independent and Democratic Socialist – which may have diminished his influence (an arguable proposition as almost reported by the Times, and quickly eroding based on his reception by the Senate today) but what does that have to do with his progressivism?
• “progressive organizations such as the Roosevelt Institute have developed fairly complex visions for strengthening regulation of Wall Street… and reducing the overall “financialization” of the economy, Mr. Sanders continued to fixate on restoring the Glass-Steagall Act“ Lots of interesting words in here, but the phrase I like is “fairly complex” as if that’s a virtue.  Is reducing carbon emissions too simple?  Are progressive organizations complexifying things like reproductive rights?   (It gets weird here too in that Schmitt praises Elizabeth Warren as a true progressive, even though she is the co-sponsor of the Glass Steagall restoration act on which Sanders is fixated.)
• “The real progressive agenda has moved well beyond that to focus on raising and strengthening capital requirements, or the amounts that banks are required to keep as cash or safe investments.” Here the argument style gets interesting.  The article refers to a progressive thing here, a progressive thing there, and then says there’s a “real progressive agenda” – which loves the regulatory intricacies of Dodd-Frank, and is actually meh about minimum wage (see next).
• He calls out Sanders for focusing on minimum wage and neglecting the “gig” economy (“ZOMG, hey guys, this dude is totally hip to our situation!”)  “Ms. Warren” he tells us “has called for a new social contract under which “all workers — no matter when they work, where they work, who they work for, whether they pick tomatoes or build rocket ships — should have some basic protections and be able to build some economic security for themselves and their families.” This used to be done with unions, social security, COLA-driven minimum wages, a strong NLRB, workplace rights, and welfare programs – the kinds of things New Democrats were eager to liberate the party from (even Social Security if you believe Thomas Frank’s research).  I’m not sure why Sanders’s support of a $15 minimum wage isn’t considered progressive (or successful) or why it is discontinuous from the work of Elizabeth Warren (who also supported Fight for $15).  “Social contract” is another phrase that throws me here.  New Democrats have typically wanted to bypass social contracts and rights arguments in favor of market forces and education. (Do you guys buy that argument? Or do I need to work on that?)
• “This difference is part of a larger gap between Mr. Sanders and other progressives in their approaches to economic inequality. Where Mr. Sanders talks about “redistribution” of wealth from “the billionaires” to the middle- and low-income classes through high tax rates, others, such as the economists at the Economic Policy Institute, have focused more on what is sometimes called “predistribution.”  I am familiar with this idea, both from EPI and from Robert Reich, Sanders’s most fervent supporter.  But to read this, you’d think pre-distribution was as prominent a concept in the public debate as “radical Islam.” Apparently, there’s a raging debate and groundswell of support for “pre-distribution” laws (“When do we want them? NOW!”) and Sanders derailed it all with his tedious talk about “income inequality”. (There’s a special irony here in that Schmitt takes Sanders to task for seeking non-viable outcomes like single-payer, but praises predistribution ideas such as “meaningful constraints on executive pay…making sure workers got a greater share of the profits, not only in the form of money, but also time, flexibility and predictable scheduling.” Cuz, yeah, that’ll be a breeze.)
• “If elected, Hillary Clinton will either join this new progressive wave or will be nudged and challenged by it. As Mr. Sanders finally steps back, the next era can begin.”  If only Sanders hadn’t even run and just stayed in the Senate diddling and doodling, the Economic Policy Institute, Demos, Roosevelt Institute and others would be swarming the halls of Congress rewriting the bogus legislation that corporate lobbyists authored, Dodd-Frank regulations wouldn’t be stalled by an army of lawyers, and there would be a real revolution of white papers and conferences.  (Another irony in the piece is that Robert Reich, Schmitt’s old boss at The American Prospect, is speaking passionately about the need for people in the streets and movement building around big simple ideas to serve progressive, sorry “progressive”, ideas.)

So, why the rant?

• Well, it’s the Times so I tend to think it’s less click-baity and prone to contrarian opinions to keep traffic – at least less prone.
• Owning the word progressive and liberal is suddenly very important.  Here it’s basically anything certain think tanks and Elizabeth Warren like (unless Sanders also happens to like it).  I take heart that we no longer have to hide in shame about being liberal or progressive or even socialist (!?), but it’s a weird state of affairs when Dodd-Frank is progressive due to its complexity and minimum wage is anti-progressive because there are easier fights to win – like curbing executive pay.
• There’s a strange, sterile definition of politics as beltway policy arguments, where the best arguments from the best thinkers win and where money and popular support don’t matter.
• Weirdest of all, there’s the notion that millions of people turning out to vote, “a party full of young voters for whom “Glass-Steagall” is a big applause line“, and a completely citizen funded national campaign that changed the debate and the party – is actually a hindrance to a real progressive movement.

The world’s turned upside down.