Right now there are two big progressive ideas out there: the Green New Deal on climate change and “Medicare for all” on health reform. Each is sponsored by a self-proclaimed socialist: the Green New Deal by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Medicare for all by Bernie Sanders. (Of course, neither of them is a socialist in the traditional sense.) Yet while they may seem similar if you think of everything as left versus right, they’re very different on another dimension, which you might call purity versus pragmatism. You see, for all its sweeping ambition, the Green New Deal is arguably an exercise in pragmatism — in the proposition that the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Source: International New York Times April 11, 2019 20:15 UTC