'Fight Club Politics' is an appallingly bad book whose most revealing moment is the elevation of Billy Tauzin--who sold out America's senior citizens to inflate drug industry profits-- and then took at $2 million job with PhRMA--to heroic status for his emphasis on "civility."

One of the many critical points Eilperin conveniently overlooks is the way that they
two parties are not diverging ideologically but actually converging on so many vital issues like
the promotion of outsourcing via trade deals like CAFTA and health care. This convergence is the result of Democrats largely having to drink campaign contributions from the same trough as the Republicans, from America's rubiest 1%. Another central factor in this convergence is the incessant, omni-present right-wing media machine that skillfully creates an "echo chamber" informing us of the glories of the "free market" (to be selectively applied to the poor, di placed workers, and other victims of corporate power, preventive war, and America's historically benevolent foreign policy (never mind the Philippines, Cuba, Haiti, Chile, Iran, Central America, or Iraq; after all, we contribute the Peace Copras and a pittance in foreign aid.)

Still, there are Democrats who represent a significant break from Republican policies--Russ Feingold, John Conyers, Barbara Lee, and Marcy Kaptur, to name a few. We need to make sure that progressive voices like these have a powerful media megaphone, so that the public does not hear only from out-right sellouts like Joe Lierberman and Hillary Clinton or equivocating disappointments like Barack Obama.