Previously published on BillMoyers.com.

In a web exclusive interview, political scientist Adolph Reed Jr. talks with me about his new article in the March issue of Harper's Magazine -- a challenge to America's progressives provocatively titled, "Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals."

In the piece, Reed writes that Democrats and liberals have become too fixated on election results rather than aiming for long-term goals that address the issues of economic inequality, and that the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama too often acquiesced to the demands of Wall Street and the right.

As a result, Reed tells me, the left is no longer a significant force in American politics. "If we understand the left to be anchored to our convictions that society can be made better than it actually is, and a commitment to combating economic inequality as a primary one, the left is just gone."

Don't miss Michael Winship's latest essay: "Liberals Face a Hard Day's Knight?" available at BillMoyers.com.