These questions, or ones like them, bother me intensely whenever leftists start bad mouthing the left for this or the other alleged shortcoming in its "relation to the people." Actually, in any demographically *or organizationally* significant way, the answer to all these questions is "No one!" (In invoking demographic significance, the the total population I have in mind is fairly small: Self-consciously self-labelled leftists" (who are not, like Alterman, obviously lying when they give themselves that label).
This is the reason Moore's article in the *Nation* on the left's need for humor ticked me off so, and ticked me off at a number of close friends and comrades who went along with Moore's posturing in that article. Perhaps Yoshie would re-post the message she sent at that time expanding on my briefly expressed irritation with pointless left self-hating.
Carrol