Overton's Window

Joseph P. Overton, who came up the Overton Window, died in a plane crash in 2003. 

His window is the range of ideas most voters are willing to consider. Ideas outside the window count for nothing in politics. For example, in 1980 most voters were not open to talk of socialism. 

The window shifts over time. Reform movements have to move the window to the left or right to make progress--to end a Gilded Age.  

Sen. Bernie Sanders, an avowed democratic socialist, won 22 primaries in the last Presidential contest. The Overton window shifted to include the arguments of Sanders, Trump and Warren. Voters became willing to consider their ideas. 

In the 2018 election several Muslims were elected to Congress. AOC won in New York. Ideas unthinkable in 1990 are now inside the window. The Republican oligarchs are cowed. Democratic oligarchs are suddenly backing left-leaning Elizabeth Warren (against Sanders), a sign that the window has moved quite a bit; panic has reached the editorial board of the New York Times.