Memo to Progressives: We Won. Huffington Post is featuring an article by Thomas Edsall entitled "Battle Royale: Center-Right Versus Center-Left In the Democratic Party."

But there's one problem.

There is no battle.

Obama's projected appointments of Hillary Clinton, Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder, and William Gates to cabinet posts has been met with some consternation in the liberal blogosphere.

But not all that much.

In fact, all of these figures now support progressive views on major policy questions. Hillary Clinton supports a schedule for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Holder strongly opposes torture and wants to close Guantanamo. Geithner seems to be on board with a $500-700 billion stimulus package that's almost big enough for Paul Krugman and Gates appears to be willing to tackle the defense contracting boondoggle.

Perhaps that's why Chris Bowers of Open Left is one of the few major liberal bloggers who is really dismayed by Obama's selections. Other like Josh Marshall and David Sirota are happy enough while Glenn Greenwald and Digby are unsurprised but not actually doing backflips.

What about me?

Count me among the happy campers. Like Sirota, I see Obama's appointments as putting political savvy behind a progressive agenda and I'm excited about the prospect of getting out of Iraq, closing Guantanamo, ending torture, and getting legislation passed to fight the recession, reform health care, and jump start energy policy.

That's the key thing--GETTING LEGISLATION PASSED!

But back to the lack of a battle.

There is no battle between center-right and center-left because there is no battle over Obama's core progressive policies.

Therein lies the story of the fall of Democratic neo-liberalism.

During the Clinton years and the early part of the Bush administration, the Democrats were dominated by a moderate "neo-liberal" faction that viewed liberals rather than Republicans as their primary opponents. Neo-liberals pushed NAFTA, welfare reform, and deregulation while toying with the idea of privatizing social security. They liked an aggressive foreign policy and were interested in experimenting with any kind of Republican idea that would stick it to organized labor, blacks, Hispanics, feminists, and liberals. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Lawrence Summers, and probably Rahm Emanuel have all been in the neo-liberal camp. So have most of the major "liberal" pundits like Joe Klein, Michael Kinsley, and David Broder.

That's the main reason why it was so difficult to find liberal perspectives on television news shows. Most of the designated liberals hated liberalism.

But one of the great ironies of contemporary politics is that the Bush administration killed neo-liberalism. After eight years of Bush, most of the neo-liberal agenda is in ruins. Liberals were right about everything while the Republicans have revealed themselves as narrow ideologues and blustering incompetents. Environmentalism and gay rights are close to becoming common sense while foreign policy aggression, economic deregulation, and social security privatization have all been delegitimated. Free trade is taking a lot of hits and the whole idea of governing through "market mechanisms" is yesterday's news.

Because of the collapse of neo-liberalism, Bill and Hillary Clinton are war opponents, Joe Klein was a leading critic of John McCain, and neo-liberal holdouts like Joe Lieberman and Mark Penn became outcasts. There are still scattered remains, but neo-liberalism has pretty much disappeared as a political force within the Democratic Party.

And that's why there's no "battle royale" between the center-right and the center-left in the Democratic Party.

Progressives have already won the battle.