All Sander's primary subordinates have revealed over and over and over again on Twitter that they give zero phucks about party unity or goals. They only work to elect Sanders.

Traditional Democrats are told by Zogby, Turner, Konst that the real way forward is not promoting leftist goals...but to swing right and try to earn right wing votes.

So a new bridge - or any infrastructure project - is more than just building it, more than just the end result.  

And, while these kinds of programs don't just spring fully-formed into existence, I don't know why you'd need a new bureaucratic structure when the government itself is already paying millions of government employees - presumably, with no great difficulty.

Further, as I understand it, this wouldn't just be about infrastructure jobs - it would be about jobs in education, care-giving, the environment - AND it would also be about training.

Kevin Drum points out, though, that there's going to be a problem giving $15/hour jobs - with health benefits! - to people who already have the same jobs, making less.  Why would you stay in a lesser-paying job when you can quit for a government job doing essentially the same work making more money?  I mean, people do this all the time in the private sector, but not on the scale that a guaranteed jobs program might create.

And what does that do to the private sector?  I'm not sure anyone knows.

Clearly, it needs more thought, but on some level, I can't help but think that some of the objections that are surfacing are not unlike those that are raised on the subject of single-payer/Medicare For All.

It's long, but here's an excerpt:

We fantasize about an early, dramatic end to the Trump years in part because that signals a return to normalcy and a rejection of all the dysfunctions he symbolizes. For more sophisticated observers who know that the forces that produced Trump will continue after he's gone, you see either a wallowing into dystopia -- musing about an American descent into outright tyranny, of the kind occurring in the formerly democratic Hungary and Poland right now. Or you see fantasies of utopia, as in Bernie Sanders's characterization of the anti-Trump resistance as a broader "political revolution, something long overdue" that will sweep into power "an agenda that works for the working families of our country and not just the billionaire class."

[...]

I understand the yearning not to muddle, for a big, climactic finish to both the Trump presidency and the American national nightmare. But if muddling through is to lead anywhere, we ought to be prepared for it, and prepared to make the most of it, rather than thinking a deus ex machina like a civil war or revolution or impeachment will blow the whole thing up in a stroke. That kind of conviction can breed complacency or disdain for good incrementalist ideas. And it can breed fatalism about what's possible in the current system by setting the standard for success impossibly high.

[...]

The truth is the Trump years will likely end with a whimper rather than a bang -- just as the conclusion of Watergate did not lead to a cleansed and more ethical politics, and just as the financial crisis did not usher in a new era of ethical banking.

Part of the pain of those crises came from Americans as a people expecting too much out of them, expecting a greater transformation than was actually on offer. If, as Davidson says, the Trump presidency's collapse is one such moment, we should enter it with a clearer sense of the problems that gave rise to Trump, and the discipline, the vision, and, most importantly, the patience to tackle them.

Now, after years of commenting here, you know me: I am not big on incrementalism - but - I think the right kind of incrementalism has a place, and I completely agree with our needing to be prepared for what comes after Trump, and how to make the right kind of changes to get this country on a better path.

My sense with Sanders is that yes, I think he helped inspire a number of people to get active in politics, especially at the local level.  A lot of change starts local (as Donald from Hawaii is wont to tell us regularly), and works its way to the national level.

But the times, they are a-changing, and that energy that Sanders unquestionably infused into the process needs to grow into real, tangible changes.  There is only so long people can hear the "millionaires and billionaires" speeches without actual change before it devolves into so much noise and empty rhetoric.

The populist instinct those guys appeal to is a kind of social democratic utopia in the "world to come."