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The current political stalemate within Congress cannot be easily solved. President Obama, so far content to yield to Republican demands an inch at a time, is now faced with demands to yield a mile. Obama has made compromise a hallmark of his Presidency even as the GOP’s demands move steadily to the far right of the political spectrum. But, according to journalist Eric Alterman, Obama’s style has been not only ineffective, it reveals a perpetual political blindness by the President to the fact that his opposition party has any interest whatsoever in actually governing. In his new book Kabuki Democracy: The System Vs. Barack Obama, Alterman posits that the American political system is structured to work against progressive change, from Senators’ power of secret holds on legislation, to the overwhelming and legalized system of corporate political bribery, to the dominance of Rupert Murdoch’s extremist media machine shifting the debate further and further to the right. Despite numerous strategic missteps by President Obama, he faces a right-wing juggernaut so powerful that it should come as no surprise that Candidate Obama’s promises have not panned out. Furthermore, according to Alterman, “[President] Roosevelt was pushed from the left by a genuine mass movement [while advocating for the New Deal] whereas Barack Obama is facing the opposite.” I spoke with Eric Alterman earlier this year.

GUEST: Eric Alterman, Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, a columnist for The Nation, Moment, and the Daily Beast, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Fellow at the Nation Institute, and the author of several books including the national bestseller “What Liberal Media?” His latest book is Kabuki Democracy: The System Vs. Barack Obama