Tom sometimes gets over the top in his rhetoric. Not that I ever would.

I think he has tried to make it clear in his less emotional moments that there are very different groups of leftists and liberals. While both favor governmental intervention to improve perceived peoblems with free market forces, it's the extreme left that he has targeted in the rants concerning bringing up kids, extreme environmentalism, and strident university opposition to US war efforts and western values. These folks are not typically your garden variety Democratic liberals. Those liberals he targets on domestic politics like tax cuts, etc. He attempts to make some distinctions, distinctions that cannot be qualified in every post. And yes where liberals and far leftists agree & congregate, he means to target both.

Similar blurring and misunderstanding occurs when conservarives & libertarians perceive themselves being lumped in with say a far right Helms or a Pat Robertson, people who believe in restrictions on individual freedoms. And where a standard variety Republican and Pat Robertson agree, that's fair grouping as seen from the Democratic view.

-philw