You need the composite character because the moribund liberalism of today's educated ruling class features two stock characters. There is the old-style machine pol, the class warrior still ranting away about good jobs at good wages to his union hall buddies, or his modern race warrior variant frightening blacks with nightmares of a return to Jim Crow. Then there is the stock urban liberal smoothly imagining well-run administrative programs that will deliver affordable something or other: housing, health care, education, day-care, contraception.
So here we are in the fall of 2012 with these stereotypes ranting or muttering away with their tired clichés while the nation gets flushed down the toilet.
