Two years ago, the Democratic frontrunner running for president scored votes and pundit points by reasoning that universal health care — among other big ideas being floated by liberals at the time — was too difficult: that progress happens in increments, and not earthquakes.

That was 2016.

This year, likely Democratic contenders for the 2020 White House race have embraced not only single-payer, but as of this week, an even more radical idea that makes government health care look like an exercise in political moderatism.

Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders have each called for a program that would guarantee a job for every able-bodied American who wants one. It’s a grand, loud, on-the-nose reincarnation of the emergency employment programs in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. As with universal health care, it’s likely to be a big ticket talking point in the next Democratic Party primary and — hopefully -- the next presidential race.

The jobs-for-all concept is being spun by advocates as a crucially needed federal investment project. Many of the jobs would revolve overdue initiatives such as infrastructure development and the “guarantee” provision would benefit applicants who are often marginalized by the private sector (among others, people of color, those with disabilities, the poor and the formerly incarcerated). A guaranteed jobs program would also set a new tone in Washington for renewed government spending, which has long been curtailed by the whims of deficit hawks and the dubious idea that deficits actually matter.

But here’s the thing: all of these compelling arguments are going to run into a wall of opposition from conservative and liberal public figures who will hotly denounce the jobs-for-all program as socialism or an act of political vanity. They won’t necessarily call it either of those things, but they’ll reject the concept on the grounds that it’s too radical, too unwieldy, or — as Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum recently put it — totally unrealistic and “insane.”

It might seem strange for a magazine named after a 20th century labor organizer to malign the guaranteed jobs program in favor of more liberal incrementalism, but in a way, Drum’s article epitomizes why the jobs-for-all idea is going to generate argument: because many of America’s liberal pundits haven’t moved on from 2016 in the way that millions of liberal voters are moving on and evolving.

These voters — spurred by millennials — are moving further to the left at a faster rate than many of their elected representatives. New polling on the jobs-for-all concept also suggests that the public could embrace the idea even as public figures shoot it down. A new study by Data for Progress and Civis Analytics found that 52 percent of those surveyed support the idea of promising jobs to every American adult. And that survey queried opinions from Americans of all political persuasions: not just Democrats.

But there’s also a more primal dimension to the disconnect between Democratic voters and Democratic public figures, in which the guaranteed jobs program becomes even more meaningful.