"There's always a small cataclysm," Merry Rutrick explained. "That's what we talk about."

Rutrick is a co-host of Drinking Liberally Boston, and the cataclysm last Wednesday night was the impending vote in the US House to overturn President Bush's veto of the State Children's Health Insurance Program funding bill.

"I'm so psyched that Tsongas got elected," said co-host Ethan Tavan. "I hope she gets sworn in in time for the vote." (She did, and the SCHIP vote was her first. The Democrats lost anyway.)

Drinking Liberally is a national organization, founded in May 2003 in New York City. It began at a time when liberals were in a national political retreat and the solution seemed to be obvious. "Promote democracy one pint at a time."

Drinking Liberally Boston, one of 219 chapters, meets every Wednesday at the Globe Bar, across Boylston from Copley Square. The bar is stylish but not overbearing: spacious, with hardwood floors, a long wooden bar, hanging lamps and wall sconces. Sandwiches cost nine bucks. It's a good setting for Drinking Liberally, who last Wednesday were stuffed around a table at the front of the bar. Their space was marked by a blue balloon. After coming to the Globe week after week, the group has a semi-official dish: the salmon burger, which almost everybody orders.

Following a brief interlude to discuss internal business -- and to add another table for a couple of newcomers -- the talk turned back to politics. Specifically, the eerie persistence of Ronald Reagan's ghost.

"They probably pray to him before they campaign," said Jen Siegel, a petite woman in glasses with tight curls in her dark hair. Siegel carries a backpack with a peace button and has a dainty manner (she eats her salmon burger with a knife and fork) that belies her gift for cutting one-liners. On Dennis Kucinich: "I don't like his platitudes. Him and his department of peace." On whether Drinking Liberally actually drinks only moderately: "When it gets to be winter, people get more depressed and they drink more."

Siegel and Rutrick knew each other from the Cambridge chapter of Drinking Liberally. Brookline also has one. Far from sparking a rivalry or betraying an ideological split, the three groups are cordial and join together for events, like presidential debates or State of the Union speeches, which call for extra camaraderie. Though some members of the Cambridge chapter want to combine the groups on a weekly basis, the current arrangement is convenient. Live in Boston but work in Cambridge? There's a group for you. Does crossing the Charles make you ill? Don't worry, you don't have to.

But when you live in an area so Democratic that it can support three chapters, why drink liberally in the first place?

"I heard that the clubs were more energetic in the red states," Tavan confessed. And, reports have them drinking more, too.

But even in a place where liberals hold sway there is plenty to discuss and disagree over. Tavan deadpans his jokes with a plodding delivery -- you often get the punchline in retrospect -- and has an unobtrusive way of advancing the group's conversation. He asks incisive questions that provoke debate.

When Tavan turned the topic to whether life incarceration of children is always wrong (as many human rights groups believe), the group had a spectrum of opinions. Eighteen is an arbitrary age to judge adulthood. Children who murder are likely to do so again and should be kept out of society. Murderers usually are not repeat offenders. There are developmental reasons for choosing eighteen as the age of majority. Despite wide disagreement and strongly held opinions, the group remained civil.

But it's the juicier aspects of politics that drive the meeting. Larry Craig? Rutrick had some colorful language to describe his presumed sexual behavior. David Souter? According to one member, he eats the same thing every day: a yogurt and an apple, core included. (Souter stopped eating the apple's seeds when a colleague showed him an article that said they were poisonous.)

At the end of the night, as the political discussion died and the group splintered into pairs and trios, gossip took over. Boyfriends and girlfriends, or the lack thereof, travel opportunities, and work frustrations replaced Tsongas, Reagan, the UN, and wide stances.

As one member put it, "We like politics, but we also like people."

Drinking Liberally Boston meets every Wednesday at 7pm at Globe Bar, 565 Boylston St. The Cambridge chapter meets Wednesdays at 7pm at People's Republik, 876 Mass. Ave., and the one in Brookline meets on the second and fourth Tuesdays at 7pm at Matt Murphy's, 14 Harvard St. There is no fee to join.