as candidate Obama repeatedly promised to do. How'd that work out in practice? In December Politico reported that "Washington's influence industry is on track to shatter last year's record $3.3 billion spent to lobby Congress and the rest of the federal government -- and that's with a down economy and about 1,500 fewer registered lobbyists in town." In the truer-believing regions of the progressive political world, the broad agenda of carbon price hikes, centralized health care, greater regulation, increased taxes, and government-mandated diversity in boardrooms are not just sound and moral policy. They are inherently popular , if only the usual obstacles to justice and reform can be neutralized or removed. Back when he was still considered a plausible stand-in for "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" (enough to win 2.7 percent of the presidential vote in 2000, much of it from progressives disgruntled at New Democrat policies), Ralph Nader insisted on a daily basis that his agenda was essentially "majoritarian." Such fantasies can serve as a salve when you live on the margins of the policy debate. And as long as you remain on the sidelines, the underlying proposals tend to go largely unchallenged. But now that progressive economic thought has its first real foothold in Washington since the 1970s, many long-marginalized ideas are being dusted off for real-world testing, from taxing stock transactions to "getting people out of their cars." If we're lucky, those debates will take place before the ideas are cemented into law. Better yet,