I was on jury duty in Philadelphia and had gone out to get a bite to eat when, upon returning to the courthouse, I ran into a ragtag group of protesters shouting about the war in Iraq.

I’d guess there were about a dozen of them, bundled against the raw cold of early March, frizzy hair flying in the wind. They held signs and waved a bullhorn about, trying to attract the attention of passing motorists along Market Street. A few drivers honked. Passers-by looked annoyed. I stood about 25 feet away and just watched, amused.

But I had this distinct thought that no matter how opposed to the war in Iraq I might be - and long-time readers know that it was the war that got me into politics to this degree; I consider it the worst strategic mistake that this country has perhaps ever made - there is no way I would have been a part of that protest. Or any other like it.

I’m not the protesting type, for one. I’m a suburban dad with two young kids, a mortgage, a lawn to mow and a Pony League team to coach. That’s really not your protest demographic, is it? Guys who wear ties to work don’t really have a whole lot of time for the Patchouli-scented International A.N.S.W.E.R crowd. Not that they don’t oppose the war; many do. Indeed, the alienation of suburban America from the president and thus his party - the alienation, even, of rural America - is one of the great political stories of our time. But while those alienated might increasingly see themselves as opposed to Republican policies, even Republicanism in general, they are not ready to embrace the notion of liberalism - in part because liberalism is seen as damaged goods. In part, maybe because it is.

Or so argues Matt Taibbi in an incindiary essay in Adbusters, “The American Left’s Silly Victim Complex.” Actually, “silly” is one of the nicer invectives hurled by Taibbi, who counts himself as “progressive.” But in a nutshell, Taibbi accuses leftists of being virtually everything Rush Limbaugh says they are; elitist, overeducated weenies who have abandoned the working-class issues that once made liberalism a formidable political force:

It shies away from hardcore economic issues but howls endlessly about anything that sounds like a free-speech controversy, shrieking about the notorious bugbears of the post-9/11 “police state” (the Patriot Act, Total Information Awareness, CARNIVORE, etc.) in a way that reveals unmistakably, to those who are paying close attention, a not-so-secret desire to be relevant and threatening enough to warrant the extralegal attention of the FBI. It sells scads of Che t-shirts ($20 at the International ANSWER online store) and has a perfected a high-handed tone of moralistic finger-wagging, but its organizational capacity is almost nil. It says a lot, but does very little.

Well, I suppose it does do those anti-war protests. Which, as Taibbi later points out, too often feature “guys on stilts wearing mime makeup and Cat-in-the-Hat striped top-hats” - thus lending, you know, an appropriate gravitas to the whole thing.

Taibbi believes liberals must worry more about working Americans and less about what John Yoo has to say about the Constitution or the Geneva Conventions. My own belief is that liberals need to worry about both.

And in one sense Taibbi’s characterization is utterly stereotypical. It suggests that all liberals are like those I saw on the street in Philadelphia - and that, maybe, you can’t oppose the Leader’s policies, you can’t be appalled by Limbaugh’s latest rantings without wearing flowers in your hair. That is false.

But in another sense, liberalism does get defined by this. And that, I think, traps those who feel that they cannot support what Republicanism has become or what it has done to this country but believe that everyone on the other side of the fence fits the stereotype.

The key is for the other side not to fit the stereotype. Or maybe it’s an opening for the “third way” I’ve invoked of late, a coaliton of realists who govern that way. Liberalism, Taibbi seems to say, lacks respectability. You can argue that point, but let’s say that in some cases, it can be true.

Republicans, on the other hand, have respectability to spare - but they’ve lost credibility.

Voters, I suspect, require both.