When progressives wanted Wall Street banks to reduce the mortgages of underwater homeowners as a condition for getting bailed out, the White House and most congressional Democrats turned a deaf ear.
Progressives also pushed to go over the fiscal cliff and end the Bush tax cuts, sought a "public option" for health insurance, wanted an Employee Free Choice Act that would make it easier to form unions, tried to resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act as part of financial regulation, objected to the President's proposed "chain-weighted CPI" for Social Security and cuts in Social Security.
On all of these they got nowhere. Yet progressives in the Democratic Party took their lumps without declaring civil war.
Had the President and congressional Democrats reflected the Party's historic roots and risen to the challenge of widening inequality, De Blasio's proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy to finance better schools wouldn't appear conspicuous or even ideological. It would be another pragmatic attempt to deal with the nation's challenge of reversing the scourge of inequality.
In other words, Christie appears pragmatic and De Blasio ideological only in comparison with their own parties.
But in terms of where America is and what it needs, now and in the foreseeable future, these two labels should be reversed.
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