The WSWS

predictably takes a very dim view of the Obama/Cheney show of last week:

The essential continuity between these two administrations is based not on some common perception of an existential terrorist threat, but rather on the class interests that both these governments have defended and the profound contradictions of American capitalism in crisis. Neither the unprecedented social polarization and inequality that prevail within the US, nor the explosive growth of militarist violence that characterizes its role on the world stage, is compatible with democracy.

The indifference of the media to the dangers posed in the Obama-Cheney exchange only underscores the political reality that there exists no genuine constituency for the defense of democratic rights within America’s ruling establishment. The predominant sections of the ruling elite see democratic forms of rule and fundamental civil liberties as impediments to resolving the present crisis by means of war abroad and the decimation of the social conditions of the working class within the US itself.