Two fundamental techniques undergird progressives’ success at narrative spinning. The first is skillful framing of the debate through investing heavily in public opinion making machinery. This disarms critics while giving lawmakers cover to vote for bills they’ve neither read nor understood. Thus framed, policies are judged only by their stated intentions, never their actual results. This allows politicians to promote new pieces of legislation named for their lofty objectives, even if the thousands of pages of vague and contradictory content deliver just the opposite.

The second is dodging all responsibility for failure. This is accomplished by blaming insufficient resources, the prior administration, the greedy 1 percent, sabotage by Republicans, or even the people’s obdurate failure to appreciate the progressive benefits conferred upon them. When the going gets tough, reality can be dismissed with a slogan. Forward!…

And so, 2013 may prove to be the year the progressive spell was finally broken. The crash of Obama’s signature health care legislation, the Detroit bankruptcy, a hapless foreign policy as ill-defined as the Syrian red line, the meteoric growth of Food Stamp Nation, millions of long-term unemployed leaving the workforce, college graduates begging for jobs while struggling under $1 trillion in loans, the collapse of the global warming juggernaut, the debasement of the dollar with nothing to show for it but a stock market bubble—there are just too many progressive fingerprints on an unbroken string of failures for a good-intentions hall pass to carry much weight this time.