This is where we are now: American liberals have spent their entire lives focusing on norms, rules, and processes. They’ve chortled at the wacky radicals to their left and conducted the science of the possible, operating on what is “realistic,” the only meaningful political value. In so doing, the Carter and Clinton administrations jettisoned a fair share of liberal principles: Yikes, did we shaft unions and sign health care over to insurance companies? Sorry, we were busy “getting things done,” like deregulating the financial sector and ballooning the war on drugs.
