Gar,one balancing act a lot of progressives have to deal with is what I call a “back to 2007″ issue. With mass unemployment and a weak recovery a lot of people are simply calling for an unemployment rate under 5% – we want jobs no matter what!

But in the long-run many jobs need to go (incarceration, military, wasteful intermediaries in many other industries), the work week needs to come down, and prosperity needs to be broadly shared.

The right has focused all its energy on its own long-term strategy (eliminate the New Deal/Great Society) while the left is just trying to deal with the short-term issue of weak employment. How do progressives split or incorporate both the short and long term in a useful way?