Will the Democratic presidential nomination go to a centrist or a progressive? Which choice would give the party the best chance in next year’s election? Honestly, I have no idea.

One thing I can say, however, is that neither centrism nor progressivism is what it used to be.

There was a time when arguments between centrists and progressives were framed as debates between realism and idealism. These days, however, it often seems as if the centrists, not the progressives, are out of touch with reality. Indeed, sometimes it feels as if centrists are Rip Van Winkles who spent the last 20 years in a cave and missed everything that has happened to America and the world since the 1990s.

You can see this in politics, where Joe Biden has repeatedly declared that Republicans will have an “epiphany” once Donald Trump is gone, and once again become reasonable people Democrats can deal with. Given the G.O.P.’s scorched-earth politics during the Obama years, that’s a bizarre claim.

You can also see it in economics. There are many reasonable criticisms you could offer of Elizabeth Warren’s economic proposals. But the one I keep seeing is that Warren would turn America into (cue scary music) Europe, maybe even (cue even scarier music) France. And you have to wonder whether people who say such things have paid any attention to either Europe or America over the past few decades.