A Real “Modern Progressive.”

The issue: Feingold’s recently signed campaign finance reform bill. Clinton, whose husband’s leasing of the Lincoln Bedroom had helped inspire the new law, was accompanied by an attorney. The attorney’s job: Look for loopholes, loopholes that would allow the Democrats to keep raking in soft money — unregulated, unlimited contributions to the party coffers. When Feingold objected, Clinton scolded him like Empress Livia dressing down a courtier. ‘You’re not living in the real world,’ she shouted. ‘Senator,’ Feingold responded coolly, ‘I do live in the real world, and I’m doing just fine in it.’” Hey, Hillary…want to see what a real “modern progressive” looks like? Writer Edward McClellan reviews Sanford Horwitt’s Feingold, a new biography of the Senator, for Salon, placing him in a long tradition of Wisconsin mavericks dating back to the inimitable Robert La Follette. “As Horwitt puts it, Feingold’s campaign was in the tradition of La Follette’s ‘progressives, who “mostly thought of themselves as perpetual underdogs against the big-money interests.‘”