I once told a liberal in a chat room about the foul and hateful things said on DU. He told me that he didn't believe it and it was "probably a Republican stunt to make democrats look bad".
My lurking at DU was a sobering experience. As a reformed liberal, I can hardly believe how much that ideology has changed. When I was a liberal, it wasn't about hatred or name calling or vulgarity. We believed very passionately in causes [some of them good causes, some woefully mistaken] and worked to bring about what we perceived as a good end. Nowadays, liberals seem to do little more than vie with each other to out-hate anyone who disagrees with them even nominally. It has become so ugly and evil, it is just hard for me to believe the bottom hasn't fallen out, and people haven't turned away in droves.