Thread by @DouthatNYT

Good @EricLevitz look at the agony of progressivism, to which I would append one thought:
nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Some of the agony is a rage against the injustice of winning popular majorities and being unable to govern. But it's important to recall that modern America has no tradition of 49-47 or 51-48 majorities leading to sweeping legislative change.

The major eras of ideological legislation -- New Deal, Great Society, and to a lesser extent Reaganism -- all depended on larger presidential majorities. Presidents who sought big change on smaller majorities (Bush after '04, for instance) have been quickly rebuked.

So if you just looked at the last century of U.S. history, you would assume that progressive goals needed a big-Democratic-majority "moment," not just "winning a series of presidential popular votes super-narrowly."

The same goes for my populist friends on the right: The problem with Trump as a vehicle for a new populism *as an agenda* was always that his support had (yes) a ceiling, that he probably wasn't ever going to match even Dubya in '04.

Now maybe under polarization there's just no possibility of landslides so you simply have to force any reform agenda through 51-49. But if so that represents a big change in how US politics works, w/no clear precedent, and it shouldn't be surprising that it's tough to pull off.

My own view is that the (hopefully) post-decadence American future belongs to the first statesman who can be a 55-45 president for more than Obama's six months. But admittedly he or she has not yet made their appearance.