The failure of wedge politics.

Here in California, gerrymandered districts and a 2/3 legislative vote standard on any budget resolutions has brought forth an annual gridlock. This year is worse than other recent years, but more of the same. Minority obstructionism blocks any real compromise toward a solution - or at least some action - to meld a workable budget for our state.

Nationally, at least since the Reagan years, it's been the same. Wedge politics have taken center stage, derailed broad consensus and stalled any workable solutions to national concerns.

It's a failed and self-destructive approach to governing. There's no big tent these days. There's almost no tent at all. And we are the worse off for that. This has to change.

Lasting progress may well start on the edges, yet it takes hold and grows in the mainstream. The New Deal was no revolution. It was a well crafted series of compromises, fashioned under the umbrella of a pressing need, spurred to an extent by the left and codified by a deft negotiator and administrator in FDR.

It's worth remembering.

what you're saying, and how wedge politics throw people off from what they should be paying attention to.

can hold up any budget compromise. We're looking at IOU's for state employees. It's been an option before, and whether that'll happen this time around is up for grabs, but it grows old.

They are obstructionists.

Nationally their modus operandi has failed, big time.

And I don't want us to go down that same road as we assume leadership.

'Course, my point, poorly stated, is larger. I would like to nail it down out loud somehow. Wedge activism works to set an agenda. Wedge politics don't work to enact an agenda.

Yet they can go hand in hand.