This sellout infuriated the Democratic "base," which warned of future dangers from putting another radical right-winger on the U.S. Supreme Court.
This Past Week
Over the past year and especially this past week the various tendencies of the American Right and the American Left have converged like the final scene of a dreadful Broadway musical as all the characters crowd onstage.
In its first year in office, the Obama administration has often shown some of the worst characteristics of the pragmatic Democrats, making endless compromises and shying away from tough confrontations, hoping against hope that the phantom of bipartisanship will materialize.
The purist Left, too, has continued with its own sense of unreality as it demands that politicians walk the plank on behalf of progressive government policies despite a lack of public support and in the face of vicious attacks from the right-wing media.
The Right has again demonstrated its ability to whip up rank-and-file Americans to take positions against their own interests. The Tea Partiers, whose organizations sometimes get behind-the-scenes funding from corporate interests, rail against Big Government, apparently not realizing that their "populist" positions are serving the interests of corporate power.
The Republicans also have shown no shame in deploying the filibuster relentlessly, even though they threatened to eliminate it when some Democrats tried to use it. Republicans see no risk in obstructionism, knowing that their flanks are covered by the right-wing news media.
These troubling threads of U.S. political life knotted themselves together this past week.
It appears that some progressive purists sat out the Massachusetts Senate race in order to "send a message" to President Obama and the pragmatists, according to some e-mails I've received and some media reports. Meanwhile, the Right and its media operatives whipped-up a "populist" fury that lifted right-wing Republican Scott Brown into the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, giving the GOP the 41 votes it needs to sustain its filibuster strategy.
Not surprisingly, many congressional Democrats took the message from the Massachusetts election not as some on the Left had hoped -- as a call to arms to fight for more liberal solutions -- but rather as a threat to their political survival and thus another reason to crawl toward the "center."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid interpreted Brown's victory as the voters telling Congress to work together. But the Republicans have made clear that they have no intention of making any meaningful compromises with the Democrats. Why should they?
After all, the Republicans and their right-wing allies have shown that a mix of congressional obstruction and media propaganda will likely assure them a major victory in November's elections.
The Right's confidence got another major boost on Jan. 21 when five Republican justices including the two appointed by Bush wiped out years of the Left's investment in campaign-finance reform.
The five justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy, Roberts and Alito seized an opening presented by a relatively minor case of a documentary trashing Hillary Clinton and issued a sweeping ruling that will permit corporations and other special interests to spend unlimited funds to influence the outcome of elections.
Floodgates Open
Combined with the Right's massive investment in media, the Court's decision means a flood of right-wing corporate money inundating the electoral system, intimidating political enemies and rewarding political friends.
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