text: Where he tries to lay out a policy agenda , as in his recent book The Future of American Progressivism ( co-written with Roberto Mangabeira Unger ) , I think he oscillates between dreary , conventional ideas ( public financing of campaigns , class-based rather race-based affirmative action , a consumption tax ) and utterly impractical ones ( a modified parliamentary system , explicit economic redistribution , mandatory voting ) .
  
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  He tends to go from dreary ideas to impractical ones .