A lurch in the right direction

The Times reports Democrats Are Rallying Around $12 Wage Floor. It's worth noting this doesn't spring from a sudden excess goodness of their hearts. Working people who need a living wage have been agitating and have forced their way on to the agenda.

And so, we get this:

In a sign that the $12 figure could define the lower end of the debate within the party, Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, one of the chamber’s more liberal members, held a rally with low-wage workers on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to lift pay for employees of federal contractors to at least $15 an hour.

“Pretty much anyone who enters the 2016 cycle not at least talking about $12 an hour is way behind the times,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a grass-roots organizing group with nearly one million members. “It’s the equivalent of entering 2016 talking about civil unions.”

It's become hard to remember that Adam Green's simile would have seemed mad just four years ago. Politics is not linear. It can take unexpected lurches, for ill or for good.