Reply #181: No, your analogy doesn't work, because it assumes progressivism is not matter of degree

[BzaDem]

when in reality, of course it is. All elections are matters of degree. You are assuming that progressive is somehow a yes or no question, when it obviously is not.

Now, when we are talking with like-minded people, most of us would be clustered on one end of the scale how the sliding scale was constructed. So we approximate and create a threshold, above which someone is progressive and below which someone is not (as if it is a yes or no question). But the only reason that makes sense in casual conversation is because most of us are clustered at the same point on the sliding scale (and most Republicans are clustered on the other side). So it makes sense to act like it is a yes or no proposition -- because that's how people fall on the scale.

But in the rare case where someone is not in our cluster of what we consider "progressive," but still more progressive than a tea party nut, it no longer makes sense to talk about "progressive" as a yes or no question AT ALL.

So rather than progressive being "content-free" because it is judged on a scale, I would say that a conception of "progressive" that is always yes or no question would be content-free. The yes or no question might be a close approximation to reality in most cases, but it does not apply in certain cases.