Pfft. I really hate it when I've been writing an essay in my head but just not yet had the chance to post it, and then I discover that someone else has beat me to the punch. Not only that, but hit all the important points as well. Well, jealousy isn't a proper Liberal trait, so I'll just cut and paste and say: "what he said."SN at the Agonist:

In the 1950's a counter-revolutionary movement became born in conservative circles. Crypto-racist, neo-confederate, anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-liberal, anti-cosmopolitan strains were fused together into a pro-Christianist pro-Americanist pro-Plutocratic ideology which became "Conservatism". It was largely self-funded. When, in the 1970's it was able to secure both a stream of big donors and small donors to pay for itself, it turned on the Republican hierarchy as brutally as it attacked the liberal and Democratic movements which were then still in charge of the government. 1978 is famous as the "purge" of liberal Republicans. By 1990 the species was essentially extinct.

In the present the established orders of the Democratic Party and the old liberal movement are making the same blunder - and the word is blunder - that the liberal Republican establishment made. At a time when Chuck Schumer is nakedly admitting that the Democratic party doesn't have its "Eight words" - the well oiled parts of the establishment are busy not funding the progressive space known as the blogosphere. A few people in it can make money from it, a few already have safe jobs. But most make less than mexican undocumented immigrants that line up in the barrios and on highways before dawn. Many of the most talented are at the end of their financial rope. A couple of them have died from overwork and underinsurance.