There's certainly no effective liberal, let alone left, presence in mainstream American politics any more. The political primary season, now in its final throes, has resoundingly buttressed this fact, albeit disguising the process by the crafty expedient of making a black man the all-but-certain Democratic nominee.

Take the scene in Portland, Ore., last Monday, on the eve of a vote in that Northwestern state that sent Barack Obama one step further in formally clinching the Democratic n ...

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