Thomas Frank: We are all right-wingers now: How Fox News, ineffective liberals, corporate Dems and GOP money captured everything

Is the left enjoying a moment of triumph -- or has a president with no bearings left the Tea Party in charge? 

I used to talk to the political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr. a lot back in the ’90s when we both lived in Chicago and wrote for the same magazines. I thought of him in those days as a man of brilliant skepticism, as someone who could always be counted upon to have the exact right word for the situation of the left in the Clinton years.

Reed has a great and important essay in the current issue of Harper's Magazine in which he assesses the situation under President Obama—and manages to throw bucket after bucket of cold water over a Democratic Party that is still exulting after its big win in 2012.