The fact that a socialist in his 70s was able to be a real challenger to the Clinton establishment shows that third-way liberalism doesn’t sell like in the old days. While some describe Sanders as an unreconstructed New Deal Democrat, for a lot of his life he was an independent and third-party guy. His ideals were closer to the romantic vision of the socialist revolution than to the incremental reforms that liberals always promise.

Read the whole thing to know why this division could affect the of American liberalism.