When you look out at the broad landscape of America media, who do you trust to go into the trenches with you in 2012 with a full understanding of the stakes and without any Naderesque pox-on-all-their-houses handwringing? Do you trust the left-leaning columnists at our most prestigious newspapers? Are Maureen Down and Tom Friedman, or even Paul Krugman, going to go after the Republicans with the clarity and rigor that is required? How about the regular guests on cable news and the Sunday morning talk shows? Are they going to suddenly adopt the unequivocal battle stance that is necessary to stave off the complete capture of power in Washington by what used to be a dangerous right-wing fringe? How about the people on the entertainment end of things? Does Bill Maher represent your values? Does Jon Stewart ever go all-in and send the direct and inescapable message that needs to be sent? Not if his rally in Washington DC is any indication, he doesn’t. How about in the progressive blogosphere? How many bloggers have been consistent, fair, and unyielding in making the case that the Republicans are the main problem with our politics and culture? And how many have spent the lion’s share of their time making unrealistic demands, engaging in vacuous analysis, and acting as if there’s not a lick of difference between the two parties?

Do you want a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and continue on its destructive corporate-friendly path? Do you want the reinstitution of torture? Do you want to see ObamaCare repealed? Do you want to see the EPA defanged? Do you want to see the Republicans’ unprecedented obstruction rewarded for the second election cycle in a row?

The country is flirting with disaster right now, and too many people on the left are still playing with their fiddles.

It seems to me like there is a major shortage of progressive voices in this country who consistently demonstrate an understanding of how Washington works and what is at stake if the Republicans wind up with control of both houses of Congress and the White House. We mock the Republicans because what they say is so stupid, but they are on the cusp of fulfilling the conservative agenda. We’ve seen how the Republican governors have behaved since their election in 2010. We can see both how the Republican candidates behave and how their conservative audiences applaud torture and gay-bashing and immigrant-bashing and Muslim-bashing.

Do you have any confidence that the Republicans know how to run a modern economy? Where is your evidence for that? Do you trust any of them to deal with Iran or Israel or the fledgling democracies in the Arab World? Do you think they know how to deal with China?

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