And the situation could get worse. Earlier this year, after wealthy progressives pulled the plug on the Air America radio network, the Left's primary media outlet became MSNBC's evening line-up of liberal hosts Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.
In other words, the Left is now heavily dependent on General Electric, a charter member of the military-industrial complex, for reaching the American public. And GE only allowed this experimental line-up on MSNBC after trying almost everything else, including an attempt to out-fox Fox News by pandering to the Right.
It's also not clear what might happen to this fragile oasis of liberal opinion if the Republicans reclaim the Congress next year and thus hold the purse strings to GE's lucrative military contracts. Or what might change if the deal goes through to sell a majority interest in NBC Universal to Comcast.
To put it mildly, neither GE nor Comcast's corporate leadership has the kind of ideological commitment to MSNBC's liberal evening programming that, say, News Corp.'s Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch has toward Fox News' right-wing content.
Indeed, the "free-market" orientation of CNBC and the more conservative bent of MSNBC's daytime shows, like "Morning Joe" with former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough, are more in line with GE's corporate interests.
The Right and the neocons also continue to invest heavily in building up their presence on the Internet, as many worthy independent and progressive Web sites struggle for survival or go under.
So, the Left shouldn't be surprised when the frame of the national debate is constructed by neocon, center-right and far-right elements or when President Obama ducks a fight over the accountability that Bush and the neocons should face for a cruel and unnecessary war.
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