Jim Webb -- remember him? -- was the first Democratic presidential candidate to say it.

"I got a great deal of admiration and affection for Sen. Sanders. But, Bernie, I don't think the revolution's going to come. And I don't think Congress is going to pay for a lot of this stuff."

The former Virginia senator said this in a televised debate back in October, shortly before he dropped out of the race.

The jibe surely didn't have anything to do with Webb leaving the campaign trail; he was at about 0 percent in the polls before that debate and showed little interest in the hard work of retail politics. But neither Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton nor former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley took up Webb's argument about Sanders' "political revolution" rhetoric and grand progressive plans.

But a lot of serious Democrats acknowledge that, rightly or wrongly, the revolution indeed isn't coming. In fact, Sanders himself isn't expecting it to come -- at least not the kind of revolution many of his supporters appear to desire. The Vermont senator wants to be elected and inaugurated just like the previous 44 presidents, not carried into power by an army of revolutionaries. Which brings us to an inescapable fact: Congressional Republicans have obstructed President Barack Obama at every turn during his time in office. If they can't abide Obama's middle-of-the-road liberalism, how are they going to respond to Sanders' proposals for government-paid college education, government-paid "Medicare for all" and higher taxes on Wall Street?

The obvious answer: Not very well. And now that Iowa voters almost gave Sanders an upset victory on Monday and the New Hampshire primary still looks like a sure thing for him, Clinton is bringing back Webb's point.

"I do think we have an obligation to keep people focused on what's at stake," the former secretary of state told MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Tuesday. "We can't let the Republicans rip away the progress we have made. We can't let them go back to trickle-down economics, repeal the Affordable Care Act. We can't let them stack the Supreme Court for another generation. We've got to get back to the middle. We've got to get back to the big center and solving problems. That's how we make progress in America. I'm proud to be in a line of Democratic presidents who just got in there and fought it out."

Can Clinton, whom conservatives have hated for 25 years, really find an acceptable "center" where congressional Republicans would be willing to meet and negotiate? That's hard to say. It depends on whether GOP House members believe they can continue to be re-elected if they continue to accomplish nothing beyond government shutdowns.

At any rate, Clinton's supporters are making the case that she is a lot more likely than Sanders to actually get things done as president, and this argument is gaining some traction.

"Should Millennials get over Bernie Sanders?" The New Yorker asked on Tuesday. The magazine notes that the idea of the lone savior who will roar into Washington, D.C., and sweep aside the greedy graspers has always been appealing but is not realistic.

That said, Sanders has clearly tapped into something powerful with his rage-against-the-machine campaign. This has brought out a hard-core type of supporter -- usually young, male and angry, and thus called Bernie Bros on social media -- who tolerate no disagreement from other Democrats or anyone else.

"Bernie supporters judge people who are not Bernie supporters, and they judge Hillary supporters the hardest," Iowa State University student and Clinton volunteer Monica Diaz told Time magazine. "They think a vote for Hillary is a vote for Hitler."

Such passion is valuable in politics -- Sanders raised $3 million in just the first 24 hours after the Iowa caucuses. So it shouldn't be a surprise that other candidates, though they might not agree with his approach to governing, are trying to steal that passion from him. Clinton, in her post-caucus speech in Iowa on Monday night, declared that she would "finish the job of universal health care," make college more affordable and aggressively combat climate change.

And it's not just Democrats who are trying to out-Bernie Bernie.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump said this week that Sanders supporters are "very much into the trade world, and I'm the best on trade." He says Sanders "mentions" it in his discussion of income inequality, "but I don't think he's going to be capable of doing anything about it."

-- Douglas Perry