Deep Divisions Between Democrats?

Matthew Yglesias is bemused:

Dialogue of the Deaf | TPMCafe : My understanding of [GENE] Sperling's view is that he thinks the government ought to provide health care for all Americans, increased investment in education and other public services, a tax code more favorable to working people and less favorable to the wealthy, labor law reform so as to mandate card-check election procedures, and pursue reductions in farm subsidies inside the framework of the Doha Round of WTO talks.

Faux's view, by contrast is that the government ought to provide health care for all Americans, increased investment in education and other public services, a tax code more favorable to working people and less favorable to the wealthy, labor law reform so as to mandate card-check election procedures, and pursue reductions in farm subsidies outside the framework of the Doha Round of WTO talks because we shouldn't sign any new trade deals unless or until the trade deficit is closed.

This struck me as a very narrow disagreement, all things considered. It would be remarkable if two serious thinkers could get in a room together and agree about everything. When you agree about 90 percent of stuff, you ought to be pals. What's more, the disagreement was, to my view, of questionable relevance. Faux's notion of unilateral US reductions in agricultural protectionism is substantively correct, but politically impossible. Sperling's vision of the Doha Round isn't completely inconceivable but seems unlikely to happen irrespective of who runs the USA due to European and Japanese opposition. But even if the disagreement is relevant, it's just not all that significant relative to the very large range of things they agree about.

Faux and Sperling, however, didn't seem to see it that way at all. The debate was incredibly heated for an exchange on the dull-but- important topic of macroeconomic policy and there was a remarkable amount of vehemence. What's more, it didn't sound like vehement disagreement on a narrow point in the context of broad agreement, it sounded as if both participants, but especially Faux, felt they were engaged in a very grand clash of visions.

I'm totally open to the possibility of a grand clash of progressive visions but, honestly, I didn't see it