John Quiggin has a dense and lengthy post arguing that intellectual engagement with the American and European right is "impossible". He oversteps significantly at times:
[I]mportant though it is to kill off intellectual zombies, that can only be the beginning of a response to the failure of the right. It’s not as if we have a left-progressive program and movement ready and waiting to fill the vacuum. The long struggle of left and centre-left parties to maintain their relevance in the face of the resurgent market liberalism of the late 20th century has eroded any belief in the possibility of a fundamental transformation of capitalism, to the point where such ideas no longer receive even lip-service, let alone serious and sustained attention. Instead, these parties have found themselves lumbered with the task of managing the mixture of social democratic and market institutions that emerged from the conflicts of the 20th century, tweaking them sometimes with market-oriented reforms and sometimes with marginal new interventions.
Yglesias defends capitalism against Quiggin. Matt Steinglass inserts the decline of print journalism into the debate. Quiggen responds here.