To assess this, I think we can agree that not all issues are created equal, so let’s focus on the ones with the greatest and most long-lasting impact. Readers of this blog know what I take to be the big two: wealth inequality (with its inevitable conjoined twin of power inequality) and the climate crisis. I do not believe you can have a healthy democracy with a vast chasm between a tiny class of hyper-wealthy and powerful individuals and everybody else. And you definitely won’t get a stable climate with everybody sitting around avoiding the subject to the extent they can get away with. Our current elites, however you want to apportion the blame among them, have failed cataclysmically on both counts. So whither this sudden concern for responsibility from progressives?

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Last I saw, the federal government gave stupendously MORE in tax cuts to the rich. How was this funded? It wasn’t! It was written entirely in red ink! Oh, yeah, the deficit. Which has been another area of endless empty lecturing from the elites. And yet there is always room for more tax cuts for the rich.

There is a difference between a grave shake of the head in apparent concern and the actual outcome. If the most powerful and influential people in this country wanted any of these outcomes to be different from what they have been, the outcomes would have been different. At the very least, there would have been a debate of a much more vehement nature than what we saw. It is so very, very easy to merely harrumph a bit as the climate is destroyed and sane budgeting is destroyed while your own position is safe and/or you see your pockets filling with cash. At the end of the day, it’s about outcome and accountability. This day is nearly done, and time to tote up.

But suddenly, it’s: Is Medicare-for-all RESPONSIBLE? Are higher marginal tax rates RISKY? Is a Green New Deal properly DETAILED? Mightn’t there be costs or TRADE-OFFS? And — again, for progressives only — what about the DEFICIT?

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These progressive proposals aren’t irresponsible. They are aimed at undoing prior irresponsibility. If we are going to use responsibility as a standard, let’s let the current swath of leaders back things up, reduce the vast inequality they have allowed and institute their own program of carbon reduction, and then we’ll resume the discussion about responsibility.