Politics 101 for the Far Left: Better Government = Winning Elections

To understand politics, you have to understand one basic fact above all else; you can’t make or influence policy if you don’t win elections. All of those right wing judges, all of those progressive policies that have gone by the wayside over the last 40 years; that all didn't happen by accident. It's called democracy, and that's what we're stuck with.

It’s hard to believe I have to make that clear to so many people who call themselves “political junkies” and/or “progressive,” but I seem to have to do that on a daily basis.  

We progressives have been standing on the sidelines while the far right has run the show for about 32 years now, precisely because a significant proportion of “progressives” don’t seem to occupy the real world. If you want to know why the right wing has been able to dismantle most of the meager social justice apparatus that we built up before the Reagan “Revolution,” it’s because they understand that they can only get their way if they keep winning elections. Meanwhie, a too-large contingent of “progressives” seem to think “standing on principle” means sticking to lofty ideals that can't possibly happen in one shot, and abandoning anything that doesn't represent at least 100% of that lofty ideal. It's why it seems as if progressives have run straight off the political cliff. As President Obama has put it many times, these "principled" "progressives" are allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good.