Even staunch critics on the left should give credit where credit is due

[frazzled]

1. My take on this is ...

that some people's relationship to politics is purely oppositional. Half-measures or incremental progress is never seen as acceptable. Let's call it, to be nice, "perfectionism."

I understand this attitude. I had it myself in another context, but once I realized how unproductive it was I tried my hardest to abandon it. In graduate school I sort of made my name by picking apart the theoretical positions or analyses that others were producing in my field. It was successful to the extent that my professors and others were impressed with my ability to find the flaws in complex theories, etc. But I knew it was a total fake: all I knew how to do was criticize. I knew in my heart I could not creatively devise a theoretical position of my own. Or if I did, it would be just as flawed, if not more so, than those I was critiquing. It meant I was never going to do something important, and I eventually left the field.

Same in politics: we can nitpick and criticize all we want. But the people trying to make actual real policy that helps people--maybe not all people, but just a few, or as just a start that can be built upon--and who are trying to do it in the midst of a messy and contentious political environment in which one must compromise with one's enemies at times in order to move another thing forward: these are the real political success stories. Not the people who make proclamations that say all the "right" things in fundraising emails, and not the grandstanders who never are in the position of having to actually accomplish something.

There are real things to rail against and to fight for, but -- as you say -- there is also a need to give credit where credit is due. I admire the people who actually accomplish things in the political realm, no matter how imperfect these things may be. They are the creators, not the nitpickers.

So my take is: if you have nothing but oppositional critique to make in politics, you should get out of the game and concentrate on something else.