Eric Levitz is a great writer, thinker and analyst, and part of me is envious of his piece on the Sanders/Warren divide on the left. But part of me is glad that I didn’t attempt to write anything like it, because I’m no longer willing to indulge left-wing fantasies. Specifically, I’m not willing to meet these folks on their own terms and use their framing and terminology.

Levitz has to expend a tremendous amount of energy to accomplish this and it’s necessary, I guess, because he seems to be writing for an audience that is already immersed in this debate and in this worldview. I have no interest in writing for anyone who’s immersed in something so dunderheaded, so if I want to write about this debate I am going to do it for outsiders that want to know what all the fuss is about.

The most important thing to understand is that we’re talking about a group of people who believe they have the luxury of wanking while the world burns. You’re not going to find very many people who are on the true margins of society who have the slightest interest in what they’re discussing. Levitz makes this point in several ways without ever saying it outright. He does so primarily by explaining that these voices are loud but have few numbers behind them, and they fight like dogs, but over distinctions of little difference and ideas that will not come to fruition during the next presidency.

A simple way to understand is to see one faction as dedicated to ideological goals rather than electoral outcomes. At times, they suffer from being out of time in the sense that they’re having a conversation that has almost no connection to the present. At other times, they freely admit that they’re focused on long-term goals and are willing to accept short-term disasters along the way. Some even see disaster as part of the recipe for getting where they want to go. This faction sees capitalism as the problem that needs to be fixed, and what they want is to achieve a socialist revolution.

The other faction identifies many of the same problems and diagnoses many of the same faults with capitalism, the American left and the Democratic Party. But they still see the main problem as the Republican Party and the system that they empower and that, in turn, empowers them. They feel like they know what to do and just need the power to do it. A socialist revolution is not a prerequisite for this, but some structural reforms probably will be required. The first job, then, is to beat enough Republicans that their resistance can be overcome.

Warren represents the latter faction, and she comes prepared to wage a bureaucratic battle that paves the way for later progress. Sanders represents the former faction, and he at least theoretically can bring an army of ideological fighters into the highest echelons of government where they can speed up the process of revolution.

This is the basic difference between the two groups, and probably the only important one. The distinctions between the health care plans or their soak-the-rich tax proposals are virtually meaningless since they’re more signaling devices than things that will be enacted into law at any point in the first half of the next decade.

Perhaps it is because their actual differences are exaggerated and relatively unimportant at the moment that the two factions fight like cats and dogs over them in what amounts to an unseemly masturbatory display. They’d like you to believe that they’re vastly different candidates but they’re constantly providing a misimpression of how they differ.

Their movements are more distinct than the candidates themselves or the policies they’re proposing. If you strip out all the unrealistic stuff, what you’re left with is two politicians who would be in different universes if inaugurated as president in January 2021.

While both would have a huge dead-on-arrival list of legislative goals, Warren would be prepared to fight on the inside to change the system into something where the left could compete on a more level playing field. She’s have the support of most of the party for this. Sanders would not match her in this. He’d find himself isolated and close to friendless in the White House, dependent on rallying public opinion many standard deviations away from where it presently stands.

At worst, Warren would represent a kind of lost opportunity by being too accommodating to the system. But it’s hard to see how Sanders could have any successes of any kind. And, if he did, they’d be the same kind of successes that Warren would pursue using the agencies of government and the courts to do what the legislature will not.

If you believe the system needs further shocks and that the main goal is to defeat capitalism, then Sanders is probably your candidate. Just know that you’re looking for an inside straight. If you think things need to calm down a bit and we need a methodical reformer to set the conditions for later change, then Warren is probably your candidate.

The biggest mistake is to think either of them is going to come in like FDR, LBJ or even Obama, and sign a bunch of transformative legislation. That’s not possible in the near future, and certainly not the kind of far left legislation they’ve been proposing.

So, let these folks fight among themselves while the rest of the country focuses on what’s actually happening, which is the impeachment of the president of the United States for high crimes and misdemeanors.