Seeing this (somewhat) from the inside, as part of a progressive organization that has some pretty good contacts in both Sacramento and Washington DC, confusion is a very good way to put it. The underlying context of a loss of faith in the Obama Administration and no real sense of what to turn to as an alternative are just as paralyzing as the sense of confusion you rightly note. In addition there is the growing belief that the right-wing is poised to make a big comeback, and as in 1994 and 2002, there's no confidence in progressives' ability to respond and beat them back.

There are a few efforts starting to get underway to address these problems, as the American netroots starts to understand the predicament and is looking for new economic narratives to use as a building block for a response to both Obama's failure and to the teabaggers.

Unfortunately these efforts are still rooted in American exceptionalism - every time I try to argue for broadening these conversations to include people of like mind around the world, others reject this as either unrealistic or undesirable. There's no way activists in any one country alone can produce the changes we need and make them stick (even in the US, where global wage arbitrage will again be used to undermine our efforts, as was done beginning in the late 1970s), but old habits die hard. I'm not surprised, just annoyed.

And the world will live as one