I think du is frankly turning off a lot of people with their over the top crap. But my son is a freshman at one of the 'great' ivy league schools and he has been trained already to think of the Patriot Act as a warmup to US fascism, that the UK is nearly fascist right now and that Dean is a great patriot. IOW, the whine-and-brie bullshitters are having their way with his impressionable mind.
Thinking back to my mis-spent youth, working for the McGovern campaign and other silly crap, it seems that for many people extremist loser politics is sort of a phase. Like investigating ufoology or looking at the conspiracy theory du jour, most people realize that those things are just not so. Unfortunately enough people are passing through that phase at any given time to make the numbers look impressive. The actual numbers of those who embrace the phony extremism of du is actually quite small, I bet. I hope.
Ed