I, along with much of FDL, am often painted by both the media and the Obama administration as on the outer-left-wing of political thought—a group of progressive extremists well outside the mainstream.

The reality is both far more boring and sad. Recent polling has caused me to go issue by issue to examine public support for the reforms I care most about. I found almost all of them have extremely broad popular support with the American people. In the traditional sense of the word, my brand of radical progressivism is boringly centrist.

President Obama gave a lunchtime speech at the US Chamber of Commerce, and the effort at groveling and currying favor was probably laid on thicker than the butter on the bread rolls.

Tonight’s guest Gus Roxburgh is the executive producer of Crips and Bloods: Made in America, one of the most thoughtful and certainly the least sensationalistic documentaries I have ever seen about gangs in Los Angeles. Directed by Stacy Peralta (best known for his skate doc Dogtown and Z-Boys), and available for viewing on Hulu.com, Crips and Bloods presents not only startling figures (from 1960 to 1998 in Northern Ireland, 3526 people were killed in sectarian violence, while in thirty years, LA gangwarfare has killed 15,000), but takes and intimate look at gang members past and present.

This ad is as much a tribute to a city and a way of life our elites would like us to forget as it is an ad for a car. The visuals are amazing–not just the great monuments of Detroit, but (at :16) the juxtaposition of the disaster porn that our media have lapped up in the last couple of years–”a town that’s been to hell and back”–with the American flag–”the finer things in life.” (It was perhaps a better tribute to our national anthem than the one Christina Aguilera gave.) And, then, with Joe Louis’ fist punctuating the image, followed quickly by Diego Rivera’s tribute to industry, the ad laid out its creed in a working man’s voice.

I’ve been going to conventions for years where “DLC!” was used as a pejorative. Now it doesn’t exist. Its ideas are featured, however, in like-minded think tanks and organizations, and throughout the Congress and the White House at the highest levels. The conservative wing of the Democratic Party managed to shed its skin without altering its policy a whit.

How could the State Department have been so stupid as not to see that Hamas would win a democratic election in Gaza in 2006? Maybe a certain Egyptian told them not to worry about it.

State budget problems are due to the bursting of a bubble fueled by Wall Street greed and incompetent economic policy. Since the problems originated at the top, we should make those at the top pay the tab, not ordinary workers.

Whether the even richer Arianna Huffington and her new venture represents the public remains to be seen, but in asking these questions thus far, it most certainly has. And there is an army right behind her if she fails to continue.

Even though it has been almost a year since health care reform was passed, the concerned industry groups are still donating millions to members of Congress.

There’s a concerted effort on the part of Western media to show that Cairo is normal again, with slices of life that sidestep Tahrir Square. Businesses and banks opened their doors. People returned to their jobs and to drinking tea. Everything has returned to balance.