"Making the perfect the enemy of the good."

[Ken Burch]

21. That phrase "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" goes back to the Nineties

in Dem usage-in my experience, it's ALWAYS used cynically and dismissively-I've never heard it as anything but code for "it's silly to think we can actually DO those things".

Look, everybody knows that sometimes compromise needs to happen. Ted Kennedy compromised. Jesse Jackson compromised. Ron Dellums compromised, as did Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm and as still does Bernie, on a regular basis.

My point is that we can't let ourselves get into a place where compromise IS our only organizing principle as a party-to a place where we act like the majority of the country is always to our right and that we can't ever even try for an unqualified victory on any issue.

The country isn't THAT conservative, and we don't have to govern, when we govern, as though a Democratic president is always a junior partner in a center-right coalition government.

We have won the argument many times, and we need to start trying to do so again.