And to be fair, I actually agree that Obama was much too cautious on some fronts. Back in 2009 I was very publicly tearing my hair out over the obvious inadequacy of Obama’s economic stimulus, which I predicted (correctly) would be a political disaster, because the failure to achieve dramatic results would play into Republican hands. And I believe that Obama could have gotten much more if he had been willing to use reconciliation to bypass the filibuster, the way Republicans did in ramming through the 2017 tax cut.

I was also very unhappy, in real time, when Obama began echoing Republican arguments for fiscal austerity despite continuing high unemployment.

And I still believe that Obama could and should have taken a couple of big banks into temporary receivership as the price of being bailed out. Obama definitely showed too much respect for the bankers who got us into the financial crisis in the first place.

But Sanders isn’t making a selective case, arguing that Obama should have been more aggressive on some fronts. He’s arguing for a maximalist agenda on all fronts: complete elimination of private health insurance and a vast expansion of government programs that would require major tax increases on the middle class as well as the wealthy.

The political theory behind this maximalism is an assertion that a bold populist program would transform the electoral landscape, winning over white working-class voters and bringing a surge of new voters, all of this on a scale sufficient both to win a smashing victory in November and to intimidate centrist members of Congress into accepting radical proposals.

There is, unfortunately, no evidence to support this political theory; in particular, the promised surge in young voters failed to materialize on Super Tuesday. So Sandersism is looking more than a bit like Green Lanternism — a belief that political miracles can be achieved by sheer force of will.

Of course, many Sanders supporters will claim that I’m only saying this because I’m in the pay of billionaires, or something.