How Effective Is 'Being Practical'?

This quote from blogger Freddie DeBoer (via The Daily Dish) is for my blog colleague (and son) Nathan.  He and I find we differ about this issue of practicality in politics:

I do want to immediately recognize and admit that I have the extremist’s luxury; I don’t have to sully my beliefs with appeal to dirty partisan politics. But that cuts both ways. People say that politics is the art of the possible, but there’s so much insistence on a narrow range of possibility that they winnow away at what we can actually accomplish. Ultimately I have to admit that there are real constraints on political action, but I also have to insist that when you make practicality a chief concern in politics, you’ve effectively undermined democracy.