An intraparty dispute regarding the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling on the $15 minimum wage is the newest phase in a broader debate among Democrats about whether the Senate’s rules and precedents obstruct progress or ensure good governance.

What the late conservative intellectual Russell Kirk denounced as the “leveling impulse,” a modern urge to extinguish traditions and knock down barriers against “progress,” is written into the DNA of left-of-center politics. Now it’s at the heart of this new dispute within the political Left.