I’m sorry, you were saying about there being no differences? What part of "insane Nazis are running the country" do you not understand?

I’m the first to admit that the Democratic Party isn’t perfect. And there are indeed some parallels in structure – structure, not policy - between the two parties – parallels that stem mainly from the overall way in which elections are fought in this country.

But to claim that the Democratic Party is indistinguishable from the fanatical snarling rabble across the aisle is to say that there is no difference between the common cold and terminal cancer, between stubbing your toe and getting gang-raped.

Structural parallels

As noted above, there are structural parallels between the two parties, most certainly at a national level. I’d argue that these stem from the way in which we finance elections; and just coming off working in fundraising for a Congressional campaign, maybe I can say with some authority that this process is broken. In short, political fundraising involves candidates getting on the phone and calling people, asking for money. Aside from the fact that this is a degrading process, it also ensures structurally that any candidate of any party will spend a disproportionate amount of time talking to a select demographic – people with cash to spare – and not with a broader cross-section of the public. It is naïve to believe that these calls do not, at some level, influence policy agendas in ways that in turn benefit that donor class at the expense of the broader public. Say you’re running in an election and a given PAC gives you a nice fat check for $5,000 (which is the legal limit under McCain-Feingold); are you going to take a call from that PAC when it is interested in specific legislation?

The answer to this problem is not, however, to vote for a Green, for two reasons. First, the enthusiastic way they prostitute themselves for republican money – witness Pennsylvania’s Senate race – doesn’t promise that they’re any better. Second, assuming for a moment that a Green gets elected somewhere, he or she would be even more dependent than a major-party legislator on said big-money donors; this because the Greens do not have the structure in place to substitute for these donors. Every legislator wants to get re-elected; and considering how eagerly Greens sell themselves to republicans, I’d argue that they would equally eagerly solicit the moneyed interests to retain their tenure.

The answer to this particular problem is simple: public financing of elections. Mind you, that’s a can of worms for many reasons, but we’d get better politics and governance out of it. Voting for a Green would likely strengthen it, both if that Green gets elected, and if he or she does not, because the Democrat would need to raise more money to get the message out and drive people to the polls.

Policy differences – values populism versus economic populism

Another superficial parallel between the two major parties is that both embrace a form of populism. The republicans have crafted, in a rather clever move considering that their policies are aimed at creating a new aristocracy of the super-wealthy, a political appeal based on values populism. In practice, this means that they push christianist tropes, messages centered on the family – though news reports show that their own families don’t quite live up to the beau ideal - as well as storylines that embrace an idealized version of America’s past; the Fifties, just without the lynchings. This is powerful stuff, and nicely obscures, again, that republican policies engender the reverse of the outcomes they pretend to promote.

On the other hand are the Democrats, whose populism is the straight-up Roosevelt economic kind. This is, I feel strongly, what we need more of: to put the government to work as an engine of Progressive social change and economic uplift. Activists such as David Sirota are relentlessly pushing the Democrats in this direction; and while there are subtle distinctions between Progressivism and Populism, the result will be, and already is, a Democratic Party firmly committed to the greatest good for the greatest number.

This is, to me, the key philosophical distinction between the Democrats as the party of the left and the other party on the right: our policies are intended overall (though there are exceptions, mainly due to the failings of individuals) to benefit the broad mass of people with specific attention to those at the lower end of the economic totem pole. Republican policies, by contrast, engender a hybrid of social Darwinism for the working class and coddling socialism for the rich, nicely garnished with pandering to the worst instincts of the American people: religious intolerance, racism and homophobia.

By contrast, the Green Party specifically, perhaps systemically, renounces populism, being as they are mainly a plaything of white coastal elites with too much time on their hands. Fair enough; but their advocacy of elite issues, coupled with a reluctance to embrace the values of the working class – which very much include patriotism, for example – will render the Greens forever impotent, or more to the point, forever the perennial spoilers.

The regional nature of the major parties

Northeastern liberals look with some displeasure at Southern Democrats (in a historic divide as old as the Republic), while, say, Texas republicans have little use for the likes of George Pataki, not that anyone really does. The fact is that, very broadly, there are ideological distinctions between regions of the country. The Northeast is famously liberal, the South conservative, the Midwest used to be pragmatic, and the West will always be libertarian more than anything else; California, of course, is its own universe.

What has never really been analyzed to my knowledge is the interplay of legislators from the various parts of the country, and how these differences affect party ideological cohesion. It's easy for us constituents to demand that our legislators vote exactly as we expect; however, all legislators must satisfy their constituents, including those from Iowa and Nebraska. It's a bit much to expect that all Democrats across the country bow and scrape to the agenda of the Northeast. For our legislators, it means they must inevitably arrive at some lower common denominator in terms of policy, otherwise they wind up with policies unpalatable in large sections of the country.

The larger point is this: when national parties coalesce, they tend to develop policies that are intended to have broad appeal in their constituencies across the nation. The inevitable result is that some of those constituencies wind up with half a loaf. Unfortunate, but that's the consequence of living in a continental republic.

Here again, the basically elitist nature of the Green Party becomes clear – they are not in need of any such compromises, be they regional or ideological, because they everywhere feed off the same class of, let's face it, cranky white liberals. The Democratic Party, of course, needs to satisfy a much wider base – labor, for example, which has always looked askance at the ethereal cloud castles of the Greens.

The dilemma of Democrats bashing other Democrats

Too right, too left, too soft on issues, too uncompromising on others, too soft on defense, too hawkish: put three Democrats in a room, and you'll get at least five opinions on what is wrong with the party. These opinions are often enough mutually exclusive.

Hence, when the Greens show up with their siren songs – "You don't have to ever compromise, just come over to us, everything is so pretty, fa la la la la" – they'll always find an audience. This because, if there is one thing the left generally does with Olympian perfection, it is infighting.

The problem I see here is this: of course the Democratic Party can be made better. But what we can't have, if we ever want to stop the destruction of our country by the right, is this eternal carping about how awful Democrat X is on issue Y that he or she voted against in year Z. Take into consideration, just as an experiment, that you may hold a given view that most people do not share; what are you going to concentrate on, that or the many other areas here you're in agreement with others?

The Green answer is simple: focus on the differences, and exploit them for all they are worth in their cynical, destructive attempt to... I don't know, do something or other. The question is whether or not we can afford that. As noted, these are very unusual times, with a conservative movement in power dedicated to debasing everything that we hold dear. Recognizing that simple, clear fact is key to the survival of the Republic and the Democratic Party itself.