From The Nation:
Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one. Remember this is the movement that was right about Iraq, right about wage stagnation and inequality, right about financial deregulation, right about global warming and right about health care. And I don’t just mean in that in a sectarian way. I mean to say that the emerging establishment consensus on all of these issues came from the left. There’s tons of things the left is right about that aren’t even close to mainstream (taking a hatchet to the national security state and ending the prison industrial complex to name just two), but hopefully we’re moving there. And yet, no one who comes from the part of American political and intellectual life that has given birth to all of these ideas is anywhere to be found within miles of the Obama cabinet thus far.
These Leftist ideas, you may recall, were promptly dumped once candidate Barack Obama secured the nomination. FISA position? Reversed. Protectionism? Overblown rhetoric, we’re told. Repealing the Bush tax cuts? Can’t raise taxes in a recession!
President-elect Obama now actually has to protect the country, govern, and get Demcorats re-elected in 2010 and again in 2012. Does the Left’s temper tantrum matter? Not in the short run, especially if a centrist governing style proves successful. But eventually the Democrats will need once again at election time to “turn out the base” and then it will get quite interesting. For now, it’s just old-fashioned schadenfreude for the Right.
