Leftists aren't liberal Democrats and liberal Democrats are not leftists, no matter what the Republican right calls them.

Liberal Democrats are cowardly political appeasement "centrists".

They brought us the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush revolutions (I & II).

There is precious little ideological difference between the current Republican administration, and the Clinton administration, or their voting public.

It is middle class centrist liberalism that has resulted in the convergance of Republican and Democratic parties in the last 30 years becoming ideologically so similar, that has resulted in the worst partisan polarization in nearly two centuries.

How can partisan polarization happen when ideologically the two parties are so similar?

Easy. They aren't fighting over ideology. They are fighting over the spoils of victory, and to stay in their privleged positions of power and wealth.

Lieberman, the Clintons, John Kerry, and the rest of the DLC are the essence of the power and privlege among the liberal Democratic wing of the Democratic party. They, like their Republican counterparts in the Reagan/Bush/Bush White Houses, are battling for the survival of their two-party grip on political and economic power that is crumbling in ways they never saw coming in their push towards corporate global domination by the US/UK.