Actually, how many US leftists view the DP and how many leftists abroad view the parties in their own countries which are supported by the unions and social movements coincide more than differ. The same anger of the far and not-so-far US left at the DP is expressed with equal intensity by many foreign leftists towards the mass social democatic parties in Europe, Britain and elsewhere. There are the same divisions both within and outside of the British Labour Party, the French Socialists, German SPD, etc. and the newer social democratic parties with more recent militant traditions such as the Brazilian Workers Party, South African ANC, and Irish Sinn Fein.
The Democratic party is not unique in terms of its leadership, social base, or domestic program. What makes it more important than its counterparts abroad, however, is its location in the heartland of imperialism and consequent co-responsibity for the administration of US foreign policy. The labour and social democratic parties on the continent and elsewhere, including in Canada, look benign by comparison to the Democrats only because they no longer have or never had any empires to administer or collude with. But in all other respects there is no difference between the US Democrats and the social democratic parties. The class backgrounds and political attitudes at the top and the base of the DP and these other parties are very similar, and there is a felt kinship at all levels between them.
The liberal left is hegemonic everywhere, and the socialist left is politically homeless. This has been the case since the sharp decline of the labour movement in the West and the subsequent restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China over the past three decades. These developments have severed the organic connection of the mass social democratic parties to the trade unions, and they no longer even pay even lip-service to socialism in their programs or Sunday speeches, so that they have now become virtually indistinguishable from the Democrats in the US. The Communist parties now occupy the mild socialist space of the old social democrats, except the CP's no longer have any mass base. They are now on par with the multiplicity of Trotskyist, anarchist, and other small left splinter groups they once entirely overshadowed.
In the absence of the old Communist and social democratic parties, and the working class socialist culture and institutions which they jointly spawned with the militant trade unions on which they were based, the residual leftist intelligensia has lost its connections to the masses and its political moorings. It has nothing left which it can even vaguely call a political home, one which however imperfectly reflects its socialist ideals and gives some promise, with a little push from below, of carrying those ideals to fruition as a government. The socialist movement, with its elan and accomplishments, is dead. Socialism survives only as a utopian ideal of the kind which confronted Marx and Engels.
The choices for socialists are now either a) to merely observe political life or abandon politics altogether for other pursuits, b) adapt to the liberal parties and institutions which today form the only opposition to the conservative ones and become leading figures within them, as some have c) adapt to the consciousness of the ranks in these parties and merge with them and their immediate struggles in hopeful anticipation that "history" will someday turn them in an anticapitalist and even revolutionary direction, or d) form small harmless play groups outside the current mass parties which claim the mantle of the Bolsheviks, IWW, etc. but have none of the influence, face any of the challenges, or run any of the risks which confronted the revolutionary left of previous generations.
None of these choices have been proved to be very satisfying when measured against the old standards. This has resulted in a high degree of political alienation on today's far left which is expressed in many ways both by those who are discouraged and confused about the present state of affairs, and by those who have persuaded themselves that, apart from having been betrayed by the Western working class and intelligensia, nothing much has really changed.
For those of us who remain historical materialists and internationalists, I think the best means of coping with these pressures is to recognize them, and that they are objective rather than subjective in nature, and that if and until our friends, neighbours, workmates, and relatives are forced by necessity to revive the old mass socialist movement, there are very real limits to what good intentions and political organizing can accomplish. It's unfortunate that stating this obvious fact can sometimes cause so much recrimination.