This is the Tom Hartman program.

I come neither to praise Caesar nor bury him.

I do want to focus our minds.

I do want to make us do my small part if I can to make us a smarter movement.

Not only an army of punditologists, but a worker movement of

movement of pro-democracy movement of the doers of things in addition to the

thinkers and sayers of things.

But ultimately, having a movement that tries to build a stronger pro-democracy coalition

will be more important than Hemming and hawing over particular portions, strategic

elements of that movement. It's not to diminish the importance of those strategic elements, including who should be the standard

bear. It's a critically, critically important decision. But I want to talk about, friend might be too strong

the word, but I have liked, I've had dinner with, as Re Klein. We have been friendly. And he is one of the smarter people I know and one of the better writers that I know. And on some big stuff, Ezra has been wrong, including when we were talking and we were in,

it must have been New York, and we were getting ready to be on MS NBC in the earlier days of that network.

And he had been, he was convinced, and was starting to convince others that the single biggest problem in American politics was the partisan

divide and I think that was a critically important mistake. Now I don't disagree that's a critically important problem but it clouds over

what's actually driving it. We actually don't have an ideologically

vigorous extremist radical left in this country that's dominating the center

left political party in this country.

That's not what's happening.

Anybody's looking at it. I mean like Joe Biden no extremist.

Barack Obama was no extremist, Bill Clinton no extremist. It's not the deal. It's not what's happening.

They are not promoting policies vigorous as FTR or L.B.J.

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