Here's 17,000 words to keep you busy the next three days

So it looks like I won't be taking a long summer break as I've usually done in the five years of Attytood (that's what happens when you squander most of your "vacation" writing a book) but I will be gone for the next three days, if all goes according to plan. Y'all have shown you're very good at talking amongst yourselves, and I encourage you to do that in the space below. I'm sure there'll be several developments in the slow-moving socialist plot to destroy America from within.

Or read this piece on the present and future of liberalism from Eric Alterman -- it clocks in at 17,000 words, so you'll be finishing just as I get back!

Here's an excerpt:

Of course any sustained pressure on our politicians is going to require more pressure—and better organization—than progressives have been able to muster since the Obama administration came to power. Part of the problem is attributable to genuine political weakness. The right is wealthier than the left, which is as it should be. The Republicans are, after all, the party of capital. They are also far more populous and better organized to act as a movement. As the journalist Harold Meyerson rightly observes, thinking of both the New Deal and the civil rights reforms of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, "In America, major liberal reforms require not just liberal governments, but autonomous, vibrant mass movements, usually led by activists who stand at or beyond liberalism's left fringe." Many activists had great hopes for a partnership with the Obama administration after the election. Instead, as Michael Tomasky writes in the current issue of Democracy, "We've experienced the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s, and the only mass movement to emerge from that reality is a right-wing populist one."

You'll be quizzed on the entire 17,000 word article when I get back.