frank~ i don\'t care who you vote for, i\'m just saying that the more parties you get involved, the less cohesive and effective any one of them can be. if the libertarians weren\'t so insane with some of their positions, they\'d actually have a really good chance of becoming a valid third party as some of their planks are dead on. but they refuse to drop some of their planks, which is good, but by doing so, they also lose their effectiveness. the greens, etc have even fewer dead on planks, putting them that much farther out of reach. personally, i\'m just about as socialist as they come, but since i don\'t have anyone to vote for (and, in this country, won\'t ever have a viable choice), i, too, go for the person, based on their actions and votes. i voted across party lines this morning, as a matter of fact. i\'ve also been a campaign manager for state house and senate races in multiple states, so i know how to look at candidates, where their money comes from, as well as understanding how and why the two parties maintain their dominance. this is actually an ideal time, socio-politically, for a rise in other parties, but until you get a prominent, charismatic figure who has the ability to loosen purse strings large and small and a strong centrist platform, then its simply not feasible. so, to recap, the current system isn\'t great, but the reality of overhauling it, while seemingly within our grasp, is still far off.
and all this talk abuot having crappy choices to vote for is easy to fix, however it requires even more voting and even more paying attention, which the average american refuses to do. you mentioned 35% which is a fairly accurate number, but that\'s on the presidential level. midterms, historically, have even lower turnout (this year will be an exception, predicted around 42%, the highest since \'82 or so). but to get decent candidates for the midterms, you have to groom them from the municipal level. and the turnout numbers for school board, city council, county commissioner, dog catcher, whatever is historically in the mid twenties, if that. but that\'s where the decent candidates get shut out. a guy with a good heart, good mind and good ideas coming from the outside actually has a chance at that level, but since they are on the outside and have little to no money or apparatus to get out their message, they get swallowed up and chewed out and disappear from politics. thus, we end up with the party-beholden, run of the mill, lesser of two evils candidates that we see now.
my favorite politician in the whole country is a guy named Harold Selby, in the missouri house. he won his election by over two to one against a four term incumbent rep in a strongly rep district. he did it by going out and personally talking to everyone in the district. he listened to what they had to say, but he also clearly defined why he wanted to get elected and exactly what he would change. he took no money whatsoever from anyone outside himself and his wife (a total of less than four grand). he was dismissed by the state dem party, he was dismissed by his opponent. yet, on election day, he prevailed. that was in 1998. he\'s still in his seat today, by running the same type of campaign every time. however, the financial and time toll it took on him was huge. very few folks are willing to make that kind of committment to fixing a problem rather than to gaining power. if we could find and groom a few more harold selby\'s, we\'d have a much better electoral choice.
ummm, what was the question?
oh yeah, vote for me, jason king, for benevolent dictator extraordinaire!
