"We won't return to 2016's level of progress until the 2030's"

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What is a "level of progress"?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

How far we had come towards what?

Reconstruction was a good thing simply because it was morally right and Jim Crow and the Gilded Age were bad things simply because they were morally wrong, not because they were at different points along some objective, quantifiable scale of "progress".

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

How far we had come towards what?

Reconstruction was a good thing simply because it was morally right and Jim Crow and the Gilded Age were bad things simply because they were morally wrong, not because they were at different points along some objective, quantifiable scale of "progress".

You're not understanding.

I'm not talking about something easily quantifiable. I'm talking about the status quo at the end of the Obama presidency in everything. Many progressives saw Obama's presidency as 5 steps forward, but wish we had taken at least 20 steps forward, with the goal being about 100 steps forward. Trump is poised to take us 20 steps backward. It will take a long time to get us back to the very flawed status quo at the end of the Obama administration. This isn't math, it's metaphor.

I disagree with the premises of the metaphor. I understand what you're saying, and it concerns me too, but I really don't think "progress" is the best way to understand this.