Jane Hamsher from FireDogLake, a progressive blog has an interesting blog from a few days ago which helps to articulate the deepening divisions on the so-called left.   She includes a section of a  letter that Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation Magazine has been promoting   to the progresive movement which says;

"I do not doubt that you genuinely feel that your very vocal opposition to the Senate health care bill is in the absolute interests of the American populace and progressive politics. I honestly believe that you feel that the administration has let you and other progressives down by not publically pushing harder for elements in the bill that we all hoped would survive the legislative process.

What I doubt is that your actions will ultimately serve the advancement of the progressive agenda that you obviously care so much about. I believe in fact, that quite the opposite will be the result. Pushing for the very best bill that we can get through this congress is laudable, attacking the administration for dealing with the reality that is congress is not."

Jane goes on to show that the sentiments of the author are greatly misplaced and in fact support the status quo more than any true progressive agenda which is true of the Senate bill and the Obama Administration in general.  

At least the attacks on Jane from the left, which I will call the Establishment left are for the most part not as bad (yet) as the attacks by the establishment right against the libertarian and paleo-conservative right during the second gulf war.  I have not seen her called a traitor or unpatriotic but its interesting to note that the establishment on both sides of the aisle share mostly the same perspectives on the 'how' of politics and they both have similar means of either dismissing voices outside of their mainstream or of attempting to co-op them. 

The Obama Administration and their allies in Congress are not socialists as they are commonly derided as being by the right wing press.  At least not in terms of the policies they have been promoting to date.   If the medical reform bill that just passed the Senate is any indication of their polititcal preferences, I would have to use the word 'corportists' with a liberal bent to better describe them. They don't call for State control of the means of production, and they obviously do not take kindly to a free market or even a freer market, but they support establishing significant government control over business and labor in collussion with labor and big business interests.    its nothing new, its pretty much a continuation and expansion of the policies under Bush the Younger. 

I am glad that many progressives are not buying into the inane chatter from the political class about the need to support President Obama and how the Senate bill is a step in the right direction.  I hope they stick to their principles and continue to fight against it especially the insurance mandates.  But, I also hope that in time, and through dialog and debate, the progressives can come to see that the government is as much a problem as large business interest and that replacing the polyopolies in the medical world with a single payer system run by the government is merely replacing one big problem with another.  The left is correct in their critique of corporate power and the right is correct in its critique of state power.  What we need to do now is have a serious discussion about those two critiques, how to integrate them and how to think outside of the two boxes each sides creates. Jim Turner and Lawry Chickering have begun this type of discussion in their transpartisan matrix which helps to differentiate the free left and right from the order left and right.   Its a good start but many more conversations need to take place and many thousands of new experiments need to happen in order to show that the state and that polyopolies are not the only two options available and that we dont have to limit our debate to them.