I've refrained from commenting on the so-called 'Debt Ceiling Negotiations' because frankly, there was nothing to write about. The press conferences, tweets and gun-slinger spin was sound and fury signifying nothing because ultimately, only the final result matters. Only the final result tells us anything meaningful about the quantum state of American politics.

Now that the writing appears to be on the wall, some are calling it, and there isn't much debate about who holds the whip hand these days. The debate centers around 'why' it is so.

If the final debt deal is passed, it will look an awful lot like what the Tea Party wing of the GOP demanded. But that doesn't mean Tea Party members will be happy or even vote for it—the final irony in a months-long drama that involved a game of chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States.

While much of Congress is upset at the prospect of downing such a bitter brew, the new political faction known as the Tea Party doesn't abide any compromise, no matter the stakes for the country.

Peter Beinart, writing for the newest incarnation of a cool venue for left-wing thought (the New Republic having passed into irrelevance...), grits his teeth and wrings his hand, grasping at the reasons the Left's 2008 triumph has dissolved into impotence and become an object of disdain and even ridicule (muted, fearful ridicule...).

Obama, like FDR, had a reasonably successful first two years: a stimulus package that while too small for the circumstances was still large by historical standards and a health care bill that while subpar in myriad ways still far exceeded the efforts of other recent Democratic presidents.

And then, unlike FDR, he ran into a grassroots movement of the right. Historians will long debate why the financial collapse of 2008 produced a right-wing populist movement and not a left-wing one. Perhaps it’s because Obama didn’t take on Wall Street, perhaps it’s because with labor unions so weak there’s just not the organizational muscle to create such a movement, perhaps it’s because trust in government is so low that pro-government populism is almost impossible.

One assumes that Beinart is addressing like-minded individuals, which suggests that his perspective on events, so recent that no one could fail to recall them, is widely shared by Progressives. Now it's fairly normal for conservatives and a good slice of the independents to ignore the news media. We've become inured to the liberal-left bias, and assume that everything being reported is what they want us to hear, read and see. What is clear from Beinart's piece is that the left is also ignoring the mainstream media, otherwise it's virtually impossible to have missed the coalescence of the Tea Party in the wake of the now famous rant by CNBC's Rick Santelli. 'Tea Parties' informally sprang into existence all over the country, spontaneously protesting government spending, borrowing and tax policies. Within a very short period of time, Tea Parties self-organized to take control of the state primary process all over the country. Ron Paul didn't create the Tea Party; Obama did.

Beinart marvels at the 'intransigence' of the Tea Party:

it was the emergence of the Tea Party as the most powerful grassroots pressure group in America that laid the groundwork for Sunday night’s deal. The fact that polling showed Obama getting the better of the debt ceiling debate barely mattered. The 2010 elections brought to Congress a group of Republicans theologically committed to cutting government. And they have proved more committed, or perhaps just more reckless, than anyone else in Washington.

Ironically, the 'theological commitment' is in fact, also a creation of Barack Obama. The kamikaze run to pass Obamacare ignored all the polls showing not just a majority, but a vast majority of Americans opposed it. The high-priests of the Progressive religion ignored the political consequences, assuring members of Congress that the country would embrace it shortly, and when soothing words failed, threats and bribes were used. Obama, having crossed the Rubicon, provided an epiphany to Conservatives and many Independents--the old rules no longer apply. The Democrats have upped the ante, as they have consistently over the past decade, first abandoning Senate rules that had been in place for a life-time, and moving on to demolish other icons of democracy in the name of power and ideology.

Obama, Pelosi and Reid made the new rules; they can hardly complain when their rivals play by them.

Ironically, while Beinart may wish to cast Progressives and the Democrat party as 'victims' in this sad tale, he is entirely correct about the consequences of the Progressive Anschluss of the American nation:

...The bad news is that it has also ended whatever hopes liberals once entertained that roughly 100 years after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, roughly 75 years after the New Deal and roughly 50 years after the Great Society, we were living in another great age of progressive reform.

Given the era of fiscal scarcity we’re now entering, those neocon and progressive dreams are now likely dead for many years to come. Meanwhile, the Tea Party’s dream of a government reduced to its pre-welfare state size becomes ever real.

It is my hope that Peter Beinart is at least right about this.