Demosthenes builds on Nathan Newman’s post on the Democratic accomplishments of the last few years, and adds this:

To be honest, it’s just a logical fallacy to say that the Dems (in their entirety) are no different than the Republicans (in their entirety), and the Greens are pretty obviously trying a “invasion from the margin” attack (where a third party takes over an increasingly large group from the margins of a party in a two-party system, until the party it’s trying to eliminate is left only with moderates and eventually drops out of sight), but it’s still worth proving that Democrats are Democrats.

First, as to all this, I really wish that Nathan, who I respect and is on my blogroll, had done more than give an unattributed link to Ann Salisbury, who did the original list on her great blog, Two tears in a Bucket.
Next, I’ve discussed this myself almost endlessly, but the money quote is this one:

[there are]…two different sets of issues, which are rooted in our political ecology.
One set are substantive, and have to do with policy, governance, and what exactly we want the government to do…in my case, offer great day care, have a moderately progressive tax code, etc. etc. … the other set are procedural, and have to do with how the government makes decisions and constitutes itself.
Substantively, I stand with the liberal side of the house (with a few wrinkles on guns and foreign policy).
But procedurally, I think that the mainstream liberal and conservative actors are indistinguishable, and I have a huge problem with them and with the process that maintains them.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: There is a huge structural problem with the way we think about and conduct politics in this country, and more than anything, it continues to result in piss-poor elected officials, laws, policies, and in the increasing loss of legitimacy that I believe is far more important than which set of lobbyists’ issues get promoted this week (while still believing in fact that some lobbyists have better claims than others).