As with the beverages they are named after, the coffee and tea parties have a thing or two in common.

Both represent people who are disappointed in their government. Politicians aren't addressing the issues that matter to them, and they want change.

One member of the liberal coffee party even said the two could join forces.

"Coffee and tea drinking together, it could happen," Gerry Landers told the Christian Science Monitor .

But the newspaper takes note of a key difference:

Tea partyers tend to berate the federal government as a whole (or most of it). Coffee partyers seem to be more in favor of government involvement – as in envisioning a greater role for government in the future of healthcare – but denounce the "corporatocracy" that holds sway in Washington.

The coffee party is also a much smaller movement that came up in direct response to the tea party surge. Some coffee party activists have said   they hope to balance out the media coverage conservatives are gaining from the tea party movement.

Protest guru David S. Meyer   tells us that the liberal response isn't a surprise: Grassroots movements often motivate their opponents to organize.

The question remains whether the coffee party can grow big enough to cancel out its counterpart.

-- Ambreen Ali, Congress.org