Related to the last post.
At this point the parallels between the Clintons, their spokesmen and followers and Nader are obvious. If the republicans represent politics as policy, the democrats' position -to be fair not always by choice- as the party of abstraction means they run the risk of conflating themselves with their goals, something that occasionally results in a level of narcissism republicans don't often match.

Republicans are ideological simpletons but political realists. Liberal intellectuals can afford to be intellectual idealists, but many of those who would life to vote for them can't afford to be idealists at all.