Dan Savage is the epitome of ruling class White "Always Gay, Never Queer, Never Transgressive" Privileged Man. With all your money, you should go buy a prick*, Dan--don't be one.

*for a trans* man who'd actually want it from your classist, ableist, biphobic, transphobic, blood-soaked hands.

Dan, did you even do a google search before this rant? The Libertarian Party has candidates on the ballot at all levels of government, and many currently serving in exactly the type of local elected roles you're talking about. see: https://www.lp.org/candidates/elected-of…

You know, it's really pretty funny - all these privileged people spending so much of their time online kvetching about how rigged our two-party system is, when you think they'd be spending those precious moments out working to change it instead. I simply have to ask: what are YOU doing to actuate a viable third-party? Are YOU running for local office as a third-party candidate? Are YOU going to your local party organization meetings or volunteering to phone-bank to help spread the word or putting up yard signs or going door-to-door to talk about your candidates or registering people to vote or any of the other countless activities that define grass-roots activism? Or are you instead just sitting around whining about how nobody takes these groups seriously, while doing absolutely NOTHING to take them seriously yourself? Voting isn't the be-all and end-all of the process; in fact, it's the very least you should be doing, and if you're not doing more, if you're waiting for someone else to do the heavy-lifting, then you clearly DON'T take it seriously and so why should we? Because that's how the Democrats and the Republicans get things done: by mobilizing supporters and putting them to work to get their candidates elected. Party organizations are created, maintained, and sustained by the people at the lowest tiers who roll their sleeves up and do the actual WORK, and if you're not out there doing it yourself, you're never going to advance your agenda, platform, beliefs, whatever, one iota further towards what you claim is your goal to create a meaningful alternative to our current system.

@36
THIS. So much this. People just don't get this for some reason. It's the main source of frustration.

@113:

According to your own link there are 143 Libertarian Party members currently holding elected office, of which 101 are non-partisan, meaning candidates for those positions were expressly prohibited from identifying themselves by party preference. In other words, more than 70% of the elections they've won were for offices where nobody even knew they were voting for a Libertarian. In addition, no candidate representing a third-party (including Libertarians, again, confirmed in the link above) has ever held an elected office higher than state representative. So, no state senators or members of an upper legislative body, no governors, and no federal congressional offices. (And no, Rand and Ron Paul don't count, since both self-identified as Republican and ran as GOP candidates when elected to the U.S. Senate and House respectively.) So, while they may run candidates "at all levels of government", they have a piss-poor (read: virtually nonexistent) track record of actually winning any races for major offices, and the few they have won, again at the lowest end of the political spectrum, are statistically irrelevant in terms of the total number of extant elected offices to be had. As I stated previously, get back to us when they secure even a single percentage point of representation in any state and then perhaps we can begin to have a serious conversation about their viability.

I think some of this is the fault of the spectacle that our national presidential elections has become. People think change = changing president, when actually the president is really just a gatekeeper for change. A Republican president presents a barrier to progressive action whereas a Democrat presents a potential door to progressive action. The president him or herself (without the support of Congress, lobbyists and local movements) is not going to be able to get much done. Let's say Bernie or Stein were magically elected. What in god's name makes you think they'd be more successful in implementing any of their plans than Obama is in getting Merrick nominated for example? Obama is a member of one of the two major parties, has full Dem support, and was elected TWICE. Even still, he can't get very much done by himself- he has to constantly compromise and form coalitions, and since the Dems lost Congress, he has been able to achieve nothing. The good that has been done for civil liberties (reproductive rights, marriage equality, etc) has been done by SCOTUS, and let us not forget that Obama- a mainstream Democrat- appointed two young liberal women. Who would Trump appoint? What in god's name could Bernie or Stein achieve in Congress? They don't even have the support of most Democrats, Bernie wasn't even a Dem until recently. In Stein's case, she really isn't even a member of an active party at all, and Bernie wasn't either a few months ago. It's a fantasy, and if you are convincing yourself that this is the way forward, then it's because you like easy emotional neat solutions. Real life solutions are never easy nor neat, and emotional thinking is what gets us in this mess in the first place.

The only progressive thing to do is to vote Dem and then lobby the hell out of that party for progressive change while also paying attention to downticket and grassroots issues (yes, including Greens) to build a real movement. Please note that both the Tea Party end of the Reps and the Libertarians are doing / have done this. It's a real failure of the left/progressives that people focus on national elections and then snooze the rest of the time.

Merrick Garland, Stein, whatever other errors I made, sorry. I'm careless when I rant.

All of you "I-live-in-a-blue-state-it's-safe-to-vote-3rd-party" purists are ignoring the fact that if you do, your state might not be blue anymore.

@119 The Blues here need some shaking up. The Stranger is still recommending them even after they went whole hog on Boeing Tax Cuts and union manipulation.

@116
I agree with what you are saying. But the Libertarians right now are expected to get around 6% of the vote in Texas in the general. Some projections have them higher than that in California. I don't know about other states. They pull from both the non-Evangelical side of the Republican party (conservatives who want religion out of politics) as well as from the old school southwestern side of the Democratic party (mostly white working class moderates who are not liberal but support civil liberties and believe in climate change and hate Clinton).

You are correct of course about their inability to win many offices, but I believe that the Libertarians are definitely on the rise- they have wider appeal and resonate with people, and we need to be on the watch for them. They resonate with white people who hate Clinton but are freaked out by the far right switch of the Rep party. I think they are far more relevant and well-organized than the Greens.

2016 is the year that all of these idiots like Dan Savage will have finally jumped the shark. He's just another dbag that's obsessed with the Clintons and thinks they're going to create the fantasy world that he wishes he could live. Sorry Dan, you're an ignorant moron for thinking that will actually happen. This moron doesn't realize that the majority of the country could care less about his stupid self obsessed, "pat yourself on the back" arrogance. Dan, here is a CLEAR warning for you. it is not anyone who will vote for Stien or Johnson who are to blame for Trump becoming President. it is YOU who is responsible. It is YOU who actively participated in forcing the worst Democratic candidate in history on the American people. Never forget, come November that this was YOUR fault you scumbag. And make no mistake. All of your comments, writing, and news interviews are ALL on the Internet forever. And we WILL hold you mofos accountable for will happen to this country. Again, never forget Dan, this was YOUR fault you pos. Vote Stein or Johnson 2016!!!

If Trump wins, it will probably also mean that the Republicans retain control of both houses of Congress. Combine that with the Supreme Court nominations Trump would be able to make (at least one on the first day of his presidency), and there is quite a lot of misery that we would actually be able to enact.

http://berniecrats.net/

Make sure if you haven't checked on which candidates back Sanders on the local, check the link. It tells you all the way down to city council.

Hey Dan,

You're a pasty white racist coward who says he supports Green ideas but will only support the Green party after OTHER people do the work at the local level to make it politically viable in your eyes. If you support the Greens philosophically, then YOU should be contributing to the Greens financially or working at the local level YOURSELF instead of bitching about the Green Party's strategies and racial composition (which you are wrong about by the way). And if you think people are responsible to creating a good party with good candidates, then how in the hell did you manage to give us Hillary? Gee thanks for that.

Instead of doing anything yourself, you want us to stop and wait until you tell us that it’s OK to actually run a third-party candidate because . . . you are so extremely knowledgeable about world affairs that you supported the biggest foreign policy disaster ever: the Iraq War. And your gal Hillary was right there voting with you on that. As Secretary of State, she accepted “donations” to the Clinton Foundation from countries like Saudi Arabia (you know, that place where they treat gay people and women really well) while she made decisions to authorize sending them arms. That is a direct conflict of interest and it’s highly unethical. It would have been illegal, but a special exception “was made” for these countries and the Clinton Foundation. You can read all about it in the Washington Post.

Lesser-of-two evils will always result in incrementally increasing evil (at best). It has NEVER resulted in incrementally increasing good. ≤ evil ≠ good. The politics of fear just brings us more of what we’re afraid of. Voters would not be supporting Trump in such numbers if Democrats had pursued genuine progressive polices on economics and war over the past 3 decades. You understand the concept of being an enabler right? Well, Democratic voters have been enabling the right wing Republicans to move the national conversation further and further right. And now we’ve got Trump. Again, gee thanks. You are reaping what you have sown. And you don’t have the courage to do anything other than what the two-party corporate system tells you to do. You want us to all sit around and wait for these two-party corporate pigs to give us decent candidates. That is lazy and it’s cowardly.

The green party has been running candidates and filling other offices.

http://www.gp.org/featured_candidates

http://www.gp.org/officeholders

So then why don't you, Mr. Savage - the media, start reporting on Green party campaigns and talking about Green party candidates? You say you would support them if they were running - well, they are running, and you never talk about them. Maybe your fake socialism is what is in the way. Maybe you don't want to lose your advertisers by speaking out against them.

Jill Stein

People ask me all the time when Greens are going to start running local campaigns. The answer? 1986.

Greens have run thousands of candidates at all levels, won hundreds of offices, and made big change in their communities, both through electoral politics and movement-building.

Maybe the corporate media forgot to tell you we were building a movement to put people, planet & peace over profit.

http://www.gp.org/welcome_to_the_green_p…

@121

6% of total votes statewide isn't going to translate into anything in terms of actual representation, unless all of that happened to concentrate in perhaps one or two individual races, but even then they're going to be lower-rung local contests where only a few thousand people vote.

As for any "increase" in their popularity, well, they've only ever broken above 1% nationally in a Presidential Election cycle and that was back in 1980. In 2012 they did garner about 1.2 mm votes, but that was in a year with a very high popular vote count and they still came in at less than 1%. But you are correct in that, comparatively-speaking, they're still more popular than the Green Party, which (discounting Nader's outlier performance in 2000), rarely registers as more than a blip in the national popular vote count. But "far more relevant and well-organized" is a very subjective term, and compared to the major parties not even debatable.

Shorter @122: "I'm going to vote for someone with no chance of winning, because I hate your candidate so much. But if the other candidate - whom I hate even more - wins, it's not MY fault!"

This author is an ass clown. Libertarians have been working at the local level for years. It's not their fault that the two most corrupt institutions have been working together to keep 3rd parties out of any significant positions. Keep on wasting your votes on two parties that will keep us in perpetual war and steal taxpayer money through fractured banking and the Fed. Ideology like this, is what is preventing a third party from emerging. So I apologize for not wasting my vote on a couple of scumbags because you think one is worse than the other. Quit being so easily manipulated by the two party system and go educate yourself, Dan.

@130:

"Wasting your votes" would certainly seem to apply when referring to members of a party whose political influence barely rises above the ability to comment on sewer district policy or schedule PTA meetings in a handful of municipalities...

a vote for clinton is a vote for war, drone strikes, subsidies for tbtf banks, hedge funds and defense contractors. clinton stands foursquare behind the wars in iraq and afghanistan, drone hits in pakistan, somalia, yemen etc., bloody regime change in libya, ukraine, syria, the eu/imf exsanguination of greece and welfare for banks and security dealers. this is the lesser evil? when you cast a vote for a candidate you take moral responsibility for the things that candidate stands for. clinton voters; those bombings and drone strikes are yours, you own them. are you sure that's what you want?

Hit the nail on the head, Dan.

@132:

I'll take moral responsibility, if that's what it boils down to, if YOU in turn will accept ownership for refusing to take any responsibility at all. Because, when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter WHO you vote for, we ALL have to accept the collective moral consequences of the actions taken by our government. Nobody gets off the hook just because they didn't vote for one particular candidate. You think those families grieving in Syria right now CARE that you didn't vote for Obama or you WON'T vote for Clinton? No, they only thing they care about is that YOU are an American and YOUR military killed members of their family. They're not going to give you a free pass just because you tell them you voted instead for someone they've never heard of, and are never likely to hear of. You are an American, that's all they need to know, and there is nothing you can say to them that will grant you any sort of immunity from being associated with, and thus held morally responsible, regardless of your voting record.

Dan, you sound like a nihilistic nabob of negativity, with zero vision, unless you count the rear view mirror. It is thinking like yours that keeps the status quo in place. The lady you're responding to is 100% correct. Daniel Geery

Wow. I did not realize what a jerk Dan Savage is. I mean it's one thing to disagree with someone (in this case, a lot of people). It's an entirely different thing to cut them off, insult and swear at them. I am also surprised at his lack of information and critical thinking skills. This is obvious by the fact he is still blaming Nader for Bush's election. That is ridiculous for many reasons. First, given the large number of Democrats who voted for Bush, it is impossible to say that a significant number of people who voted for Nader would have voted for Gore. Then there was the election fraud, the SCOTUS intervention, and other factors that contributed to the outcome. Maybe if Savage paid more attention, he would know there are Green Party candidates at all levels of government. Just because the media only pays slight attention to the Green presidential candidates doesn't mean they don't exist. It's a sad day when so-called progressives are adamantly advocating for the neo-liberal status quo because change is too hard and Trump is too scary. To put it in Savage terms,fucking vote with your fucking conscience!

@106 Coverage, COMTE, coverage. Do not ignore coverage and say that the Green Party and my comments do not have any relevance. I was talking to Dan Savage, not you, since he was having "trouble" with learning the fact that the Greens do run people for many other offices, not just for "fucking president every four fucking years". I hope he reads these comments under this article written about him.

Get back to me when you can learn reading comprehension, and to not dismiss all of the points people make by some straw man argument you came up with, or probably borrowed from someone like Dan. Maybe it was Dan.

@136:

As I've said before, running candidates "at all levels of government" doesn't mean squat if you can't get them elected to those offices. And right now the Greens don't have a proverbial snowballs chance of taking much more than a county seat, let alone anything at the national or even state level. A mass exodus of voters to a radical party, whether far Left or far Right, is simply never going to happen in this country, because most voting age adults aren't radical in their political leanings; they're decidedly Centrist and cumulatively they don't veer all that far from either side of the median. Granted, that mid-point may have skewed more to the Right in recent decades, and it does seem to be swinging back more to the Left as younger voters get involved in the political process and their elders in the Baby-Boom Generation check out. But I seriously don't see the pendulum swinging too far that way either, given the size of our population and our collective national reticence to rock the boat too much.

well, except for dan being kind of a lazy one-trick pony with his adjective of choice, i completely agree.

but i gotta say i HATE it when people who profess to be writers use the f-bomb as a noun, and adjective, and yes, sometimes even a VERB in the same sentence. i'm not a prude. i don't care if you use it over and over again. i just want you to know you sound hopelessly ignorant and boring. every time. (insert your "dramatic" adjective in front of "time" if it helps you understand my disdain for your crap writing.

The Green Tea Party is alive and well. Why do they hate America? Oh I know, they "love" it in the way their namesake does - when facts give them a sad, they just pretend they don't matter. So much easier to just ignore those pesky things and live in a world of false equivalence and embraced privilege.

Dan, stick to sex. You're clearly a 'its not selling-out, its buying-in' sycophant on everything else. Maybe you're too lazy to look into the actual mechanics of the process, but if Jill clears 5% nationally, that brings in a ballot line for a Green party candidate for every down ticket race from city council to school board to state legislature the following cycle, plus federal matching funds for the 2020 presidential race. She doesn't have to become the first female president (and first MD) to win the Oval Office to make meaningful progress towards the 'on the distant, hazy horizon' of 25 years down the line that you hold out. Bernie brought more people into the process than anyone has in a generation by speaking to the issues and aspirations of many people who are disaffected from the two major parties. Refusing the existence of people you don't like is both politically short-sighted and against everything that LGBTQ equality could aspire to represent.

@137:

So, you post on a public comment board, but ONLY want to hear back from the OP - m'kay. Maybe you're new to this whole Internet thing, but the general protocol is that once you comment, anyone else is free to respond. If you only want to hear from Dan send him an email instead.

And coverage don't mean squat if it doesn't translate into actual results - i.e. elections won. Because THAT is the sole measure of the effectiveness of a Political Party in our current system; anything else is just blowing smoke, because it's almost possible to effect legislative change otherwise. Bottom line is: the Greens can run 10,000 candidates, but if they can't get more than a handful of them into office, particularly at the state and national level - something they have patently been unable to achieve in more than 30 years of existence - they're not going to be an effective political force, and are in fact irrelevant in terms of having any sort of real influence over both the political process and the system in which it operates.

Wanting to be relevant or imagining yourself to be relevant and actually BEING relevant are not the same thing, no matter how you slice it.

@141:

"If Jill (Stein) clears 5% nationally", you're joking, right? No GP presidential candidate besides Nader has ever gotten more than 2% of the popular vote. In order to achieve that phenomenal number Stein will need roughly 6.4 mm votes (based on the approximately 128,000,000 total votes cast in the 2012 presidential election). That would be about 13.5 TIMES the number of votes she received that year (just under 470,000). There is absolutely no evidence of any sort that could possibly lead a rational person to come to the conclusion that is likely, or even possible. It is, at best wishful thinking of the most desperate sort.

Comte@143: There is some evidence that could possibly lead a rational person to come to the conclusion that Stein could possilby clear 5% nationally. It's at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/…

I'm gay, and Savage is right on the money. If Trump is elected, he and his conservative supporters in congress and the SCOTUS will:
1- Void my marriage to my husband
2- Take our kids away
3- Enact RIFRA laws that will make it very difficult for me to do business
4- Pass a very nasty federal anti-transgender bathroom law
5- ...and a whole bunch of anti-LGBTQ things besides

When I hear you people complain about how you're going to "vote your conscience", all I hear is a bunch of white straight privilege talking, just like Savage said. When you complain that he has somehow insulted you, what I hear is that you're upset that he's pointed out how deeply unethical your thinking is that you can't accept the responsibility for voting away the rights of others. When I hear you say "Jill Stein might get 5% nationally", all I hear is that you really don't care what the outcome of the election is since it's not going to affect you anyway. And also that you understand nothing about politics and don't care to learn.

I've lived through the bad times with this kind of oppression, and I'm taking no chances with it happening again. The bald fact that you people can be so callous and uncaring about what your principled vote will do to others makes me deeply suspicious of everything the Far Left has said this year, especially about LGBTQ civil rights.

You're a bunch of untrustworthy, lying smug bastards. You really don't care about what this will do to other people. And I'm very glad you are all acting this way so publicly. The rest of us will never be fooled by you again.

@144:

A couple of errant, outlier polls nearly four months prior the election do not a rational assessment of a candidate's likely vote count make, as I assume you are referring to these averages (seriously, learn some basic HTML tags). When you look at individual polls her numbers are all over the place: as low as 1% and as high as 7%. Even factoring in margins of error, that's a good indication undecided voters are waffling, which would be consistent with what we saw in 2012, where some of those same polls showed Stein at 3% (e.g. CNN/ORC) nationwide in late September, yet, when the final results came out after the November 6 general election she ended up with slightly more than one-third of one percent.

And THAT is why no rational person takes polling seriously these days, because it isn't evidence of anything aside from a snapshot of what a few people are thinking at any given moment, but which has no actual correlation to what they may be thinking weeks or even months later; advice you would be well-advised to embrace.

@146 - so with your vote for Stein, the racist carceral state will automatically disappear and the whole world will hold hands and sing kumbaya?

That's not how it works. What will really happen is that Trump will get elected and then he'll expand that campaign to all brown people (and anyone else he deems an enemy).

But at least during and after you'll be able to luxuriate in your blood-soaked conscience and that's all that matters, right?

Savage wants us to think that batting for Clinton's coronation over a year ago against all progressive challenges like he did is consistent with believing that progressives should build a 3rd party from the grassroots. Who believes that crapola?

In 2004 while Clinton was declaring that marriage was a sacred bond between a man and a woman on the floor of the US Senate, the Mayor of New Paltz, NY was marrying gay couples. That mayor, Jason West, was a Green Party Member and he ended up facing criminal charges for his act of civil disobedience. He also made international news and got re-elected a few more times. Funny how Dan forgot that little piece of history during his rant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/nyregi…

Fear-based voting for the lesser evil in a 2-party system is exactly WHY a 3rd party can't get media coverage or elected.

This guy gives love advice? This is nothing but a hatefest.

I agree with Dan Savage's comments 100%, however I also think he's neglected to make mention of the 3rd party elephant in the room - The Tea Party. Their "viability" has produced the hellstorm that has now become the GOP, but they didn't build their party in the manner described by Savage. No, instead they let the Republicans woo them into their established party because conservatives were desperate to expand their base. Essentially, the Republicans were exactly like those ill-informed agriculturists who didn't really investigate kudzu before planting it all over the South, who believed it to be a kind of cure-all for soil erosion. The GOP, fearful of the erosion of their party, let The Kudzu (Tea) Party convince post 9-11 'Murica that what was actually being eroded was the white, male domination system that we supposedly knew and loved. In 2016, this third party has thoroughly hijacked one of the two established parties - not the slow 25-year plan imagined by Savage. Maybe this year we're seeing the tipping point and there just aren't enough Jeb Bushes or Mitt Romnies left within the GOP who are willing to stand up to the insanity of the Tea Party and say, "Get outta my party! Go be 3rd party!" There are too many John McCains - kudzu seed-bearers - who have the undeniable legacy of having helped foster the growth of the now outta-control parasitic "others" within their midst. The GOP is dying in the shadow of its former self - standing still as it is slowly being overwhelmed by the little climbers that twist and wrap around the former Republican Party so that only the once-needed erosion-stallers can drink up the bright media spotlight that used to shine on newsworthy issues and policies and achievements, but now only is only focused on the stunning, startling, gasp-producing insanity of an out-of-control fear-mongering freak show that is slowly changing the landscape into an infested, overrun, stymied heap of inability.
So, Green Party, if you want to become viable, leech onto the Democrats when they woo you on board and then suck the life out of them. Be the Quackgrass Party!

Yeah, it's really telling that the Greens have done so poorly over the years, when American news outlets, starting with fine "alternative" publications like the Stranger, always give their candidates and policies such thoroughly qualitatively fair and balanced and such quantitatively adequate coverage. I guess the Greens just haven't done the work.

@152 - Except, you know, in the real world we have two options. We've had two options since Jefferson and Hamilton went at it in Washington's cabinet. And I'm sorry, Trump is far more a danger to the world than Hillary, hands down.

In a lesser of two evils contest, I'll take the papercut over having my limbs chainsawed off and fed to rich white people.

The REPUBLICAN PARTY was founded in 1854. They had one plank in their platform: keeping slavery from spreading, and eventually abolishing it altogether. In 1856 they ran their first Presidential candidate, John Fremont. he did well in 11 (northern) states. In 1860, their SECOND Presidential candidate was ABRAHAM FUCKING LINCOLN! (Yes, Dan I'm shouting at you.) They didn't spend 25 years PROVING the "legitimacy" of their party to pompous, status-quo-kissing, fucking blowhards, by creeping toward the abolition of slavery in microscopic increments made at glacial speed, starting with town dog-catcher, cutting loose all the black dogs. So, Danny-boy, learn a little fucking history before you shoot your mouth off. Thanks.

@155 "In the real world", the 100,000's of dead Iraqis (among others) since 2003 didn't die of paper cuts. Pansack is correct, the little concern you show for victims of US policies is racist. Face it, like Dan Savage you'll say practically anything to justify batting for business as usual.

I hate your anti-white racism, Dan. And your argument. Who is the threat? Hillary Clinton is a documented warmonger and Russiaphobe, and as President would get us into more unnecessary wars and push us closer to WWIII, with aggressive US imperialism toward China and Russia, while Trump promises reduced NATO funding, fewer overseas bases, and good relations with Russia. But Trump is the threat? Foreign policy is something our imperial President will have almost exclusive control over, so why aren't you frightened of a President Hillary? As for domestic policy, what are you realistically frightened of? Trump's suggested restoration of Glass-Stiegel seems like a good idea, so it can't be that, and Congress would never pass such a bill anyway. Global warming? As if Hillary would be any different from Obama or Trump.

`@158 Nobody concerned about warmongers or predatory capitalism would ever vote for Trump so take your drivel somewhere else.

@156:

But the Republican Party didn't simply appear newly formed out of whole cloth: it was "founded" via a merging of anti-slavery factions from two other previously existing parties, the Free Soilers and The Whigs. In the aftermath of the split, pro-slavery FS'ers aligned with the Democratic Party (mainly over their platform to allow newly formed Western States and the territories to decide individually on the issue of slavery), while the pro-slavery Whigs briefly merged with the Know Nothings, although most of that party eventually merged back into the GOP by the time of Lincoln's 1860 campaign; one of the reasons the Party's platform that year advocated for the preservation of slavery in the Southern States, while at the same time compromising on the issue of prohibiting slavery in new states to the West. Meanwhile the Democrats separated into Northern (anti-slavery) and Southern (pro-slavery) factions, with each running separate presidential candidates (Douglas and Breckenridge, respectively), thus causing a split vote directly leading to Lincoln being elected.

So, no, the Republican Party didn't "spend 25 years PROVING the 'legitimacy' of their party", because they didn't have to; the major planks in their platforms were already well-established by by their antecedents and well-known to the voting public by the time of the 1860 election, and they owed their success that year mainly to infighting within the other major party.

@157 - How is your vote for a third party going to stop Iraqis from dying after the election?

@161 I actually believe that people living in purple states should consider voting for Clinton if she compromises with progressives who voted for Sanders but I am not delusional to think that Clinton would do the right thing for Iraqis (or most anybody else for that matter) without continual strong pressure from the left. Voting and supporting the greens could be critical to mount such challenge. In turn, i am sorry to say that your sycophantic ways with establishment Democrats (as seen in your total support of Obama for the last 7.5 years) and your giving the farm away without even putting conditions (as seen in your lack of criticism of Clinton) is 100% the wrong way to proceed.

@161:

Sounds like a case of "Pontius Pilate Syndrome"...

@162:

I would beg to differ. What possible pressure could the Greens (who, by all accounts will run a very distant fourth in this election cycle) exert over the President and her administration's policies? She's not beholden to them in any way: they will have absolutely no political influence or capital, they won't have any members in elected positions at the national level to exert it at any rate, and they won't have anything more than a very small, very weak voice in the larger national dialog. The Left Wing of the Democratic Party, OTOH, will have far more influence, and therefore be in a position to exert much greater leverage on the administration's policies. We've already seen evidence of this in the adoption of some of Sander's proposals as part of the 2016 Democratic Party platform, and so there would seem to be a reasonable expectation that such leverage is already being exerted on Clinton as a result. It is precisely because Sanders brought them into the Democratic tent that they were able to accomplish that. But, any of Sanders supporters who defect to the Greens (or any other minor party for that matter), by doing so give up any possible chance of continuing to exert that pressure, because they're not going to be aligned with any party with more power than what they would have by working within the existing Democratic Party structure, and in fact, by reducing the numbers of that constituency, they actually weaken its ability to exert pressure as well.

I never bought the idea that W and Gore were the same, because I learned my lesson in 1980 when I and a lot of my friends thought that by abandoning Carter and letting Reagan win (our vehicle that year was Barry Commoner's Citizen's Party, a forerunner to today's Greens), we would surely clear a path for a radically progressive Democrat four years hence, once the masses got a taste of what REAL right-wing policies would do to the country.

What happened instead was that Reagan's extremism - with a huge assist from the media that none of us saw coming - became the new normal, and by today's standards he would be considered a moderate Republican. I'm not making that mistake ever again. Sorry, Jill & company, I know you mean well but Dan's 100 percent right. I've never liked the Clintons and am not eager to see them back in the White House, and I know HRC is a severely compromised candidate (much more so than Obama), but at the very least she is a pro-choice, pro-LGBT second-wave feminist. Against the likes of Donald Trump, that's good enough.

@164 I am for pressure from within and from outside the Democratic party because there are no more blank checks for establishment Democrats. If the Democratic party doesn't evolve to represent working Americans, it will be broken. It's as simple as that. Until then, the greens realistically can play a role at the local level, which demands exposure so any vote for them will help. It's so far unclear that the left of the Democratic party will be given any more than lip service especially with establishment shills pushing for surrender early and often.

@165 "once the masses got a taste of what REAL right-wing policies would do to the country."

Enough of that canard, Carter was already on a neoliberal course by deregulating transport (air, trucking and rail freight), finance and communications, as well as slashing the social safety net, which is exactly why you voted Commoner.

@11: "Big talk from somebody who has to have an alt to express his darker side."
Exactly what sort of edgelord do you think I am, you ninnyhammer? I have two accounts because I feel like it and there's nobody stopping me.
As for the thing about aristocrats, here's what you posted: "Is the starvation of the poor less important than the lives of the rich? Should they have waited patiently for their turn to eat? People were already dying before the revolution...the revolution just changed the who."
Go ahead, explain how I'm mischaracterizing your ignorant-ass claims. I'll wait.

@29: Nice attempt at changing the subject. So when you're caught showing how little you know, your response is to go "what about this thing a candidate you like did?"
Damn, son.

@67: This.

@73: I dunno about anybody else, but I'd much rather have a generic Democrat than a generic Green in the White House, mainly because the Greens are anti-science nutters (who also happen to be pro-Russia at the moment).

Dan, you are a Hillbot. Stop your trolling with these petty attack articles on the greens and move on to to some real news about how your candidate is a lying, racist, warmonger.

@166:

But that's precisely my point: the Greens have had more than 30 years to try to exert influence at ANY level of our political system and have failed miserably in every attempt. They are NOT in fact "realistically" playing any meaningful role at the local level, as the paucity of candidates running under the Green Party banner clearly demonstrates. Look, this isn't rocket surgery here, the formula is pretty simple: in order to exert political influence you have to convince voters to put members of your party into enough elected offices to be able to wield some power over policy-making; and in order to do that you have to get members of your party to run for those offices and then articulate to voters why they should be elected. And there are a whole lot of offices to run for, about 511,000 nationwide according to the figures I've seen. Running a mere 116 candidates is paltry to the point of being risible, not only because it represents such a minuscule fraction of the whole, but because most of those candidates will never get elected in the first place. If they can't do better than that - and I mean a LOT better (and thus far they've not demonstrated any ability or inclination to do so) - they are never going to play any role whatsoever, in our political system, meaningful or otherwise.

As with most pieces by Dan Savage, this piece is well-written. Not quite the King's English, mind you! But concise. Certainly acceptable for sailors, and the political layman.

His logic is good. Almost perfect, IMO.
Problem is, if you seriously believe in the adage to "vote your conscience" or it will haunt you, taking Dan's advice is impossible.
Climbing the hill, knowing full well you'll never make it to the top is a logic that's hard to explain. "Because it's there" doesn't work over cocktails. (maybe several cocktails...)

In my mind, voting for one of the two parties that are largely responsible for the gigantic mess we have is simply unconscionable. And rationalizing that one of the mess-makers is a lesser mess-maker jsut doesn't work for me anymore. I can't bring myself to check those boxes on the ballot. And I do dwell on it.
Sometimes a conscience is a curse.

> Where are the Green Party candidates for city councils? For county councils? For state legislatures? For state assessor? For state insurance commissioner? For governor? For fucking dogcatcher? I would be SO willing to vote for Green Party candidates who are starting at the bottom,

Dan, they are right here:

https://www.lp.org/candidates/elected-of…
http://www.gp.org/featured_elected_offic…

@172:

Yes, we've all seen the lists - now, please point out to us the names of the GP candidates running for office in WA State that, you know, residents of WA State could vote for?

@169: "Stop making arguments I don't like! I demand that you instead print a smear job on a candidate that you like but I don't!"
Psssh… Nothin Personnel… Kid…

Dan should stick to Sex and LGBTQ issues. We may have voted for $Hillary before the primary. But that was before HRC, the MSM, and the DNC showed their utter contempt for voters and did everything possible to steal the election from Bernie Sanders. From dropping voters from roles, to switching Berners to Republican so they couldn't vote, to using the electronic voting machines to switch votes (exit poles did not match the "official" totals), to the MSM calling for HRC BEFORE California had even voted, etc, etc. We have cancelled our podcast subscription. I want a country that sides with everyone, not just the white privileged few at the top which seems to include Dan Savage.

@174:

Way to prove your point big man. But really, Dan Savage is wrong as this is just a hit piece for him to try and gain attention.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-…

I think you're just mad because you can't cope with Hillary being a truly terrible candidate.
"Psssh..."

This article sucks.

Lets be honest, if the Green Party somehow does make a difference in the general election for things to favor trump then that will be the democrats' and Hillary's fault for not winning the votes of the people. If her platform is so good then what does she have to worry about? Oh right, it's her record high unavailability ratings and her measly +3 in the polls over Trump.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/…

@143: You do realize the Bernie campaign is the biggest splash the left has made in electoral politics since before the Greens were founded, right? And guess who was running on the platform that Bernie claims before he even declared? Jill Stein. 2016 is a once in a generation opportunity to break through. Also, if you haven't already, you might Nate Silver's The Signal and The Noise. He speaks to exactly this problem of divining stable commitments from a flood of poorly constructed and suspect polls.

@145: I'll put a trigger warning in before I mention anything about the mechanics of the process again. Sorry to hear that you can't discuss strategy and tactics without getting flooded with fear.

Laslty, has anyone on hear heard of the 'Malcolm and Martin dynamic'? This is to say, one factor that gave power to MLK in negotiating with LBJ was to point out that if LBJ didn't want to negotiate with him and the Black churches, they would have to contend with an even more energized Nation of Islam. By analogy, Bernie is in a stronger position to say to HRC 'compromise with me or you will lose your left-wing to the Greens' *only* if there is an organized Green party for those folks to join. If you make no credible threats, you cannot expect to be taken seriously by your enemies (anyone who disagrees that HRC is an enemy of LGBTQ, POC, Muslim, and poor folks would do well to remember one phrase: "Super Predator")

@167 "Carter was already on a neoliberal course by deregulating transport (air, trucking and rail freight), finance and communications, as well as slashing the social safety net, which is exactly why you voted Commoner."

That's correct, and I can add to your list. Both Carter and Reagan promised much higher military spending and a more belligerent posture toward the USSR, and both signaled their intent to curb inflation by deliberately inducing widespread unemployment, which previous administrations had shied away from doing. But Carter would not have cut the top marginal income tax rate in half, which is the root cause of most of today's national debt and the ongoing, chronic underfunding of domestic infrastructure and other social needs. Thom Hartmann (who I'm not otherwise a fan of) stated it succinctly a few years ago: We'll never get out of this mess until we repeal the Reagan tax cuts. Carter was clearly the less-bad choice, and I deeply regret his loss. We would be a much different, and better, country today if it hadn't been for Reaganomics.

What a Hillbot

Ms Sarah - If a deep red or deep blue state turns out to be in play after all, people will know in time to reconsider.

*****

Mr Laguna - I totally honour your unwillingness to run the risk, but respectfully point out that a landslide win for Mrs C could prove to be a gay disaster, setting her totally free to dropkick us at the first opportunity. I won't feel safe unless she squeaks through with a tinier majority than Mr Obama's.

@178:

I'll look up a copy of that.

But, so far as Stein is concerned, to date at least her early (or pre) adoption of Sanders' platform doesn't seem to be translating into any significant bump in her support, whether by those disaffected by Clinton's nomination or otherwise. As I said in my comment @143, she will need literally MILLIONS of votes to reach the vaunted 5% threshold some have bandied about, and the polling data at this stage in the cycle is so disparate that there is no clear indication of any such "breakthrough". And seriously, I don't see that happening post-conventions, when all the attention is going to be squarely focused on Clinton versus Trump. Assuming there are any actual debates between the two, I expect those to have much more of an impact than anything - or anyone - else going forward to November, and I would be very surprised indeed if either Stein or Johnson from the Libertarian party do appreciably better than their 2012 showings.

In the final analysis most people want to believe their vote will count for something, and as we get closer to November the current undecideds are going to gravitate to the two major party candidates for that reason alone, if nothing else, just as they always do, particularly given the lack of recognition of the also-rans (none of whom could be considered, by any stretch, as comparable to a Ross Perot or John Anderson or even Ralph Nader for that matter). Also, the lack of down-ticket candidates from the third-parties is going to be a perennial albatross around their necks, as the overwhelming majority of voters tend to cast straight-ticket ballots.

@170 Pressure from within and out are the only tools we got to give political life to the left. These tools weren't sufficient in the past to overcome the structural democratic deficit in US political life but it doesn't make an outside pressure irrelevant to our needs or at least no more than the failure of left wing of Democrats to bring about change signifies that pressure from within is useless.

@168 Yup. Point me to where I said ONLY aristocrats got killed. Oh, you can't? *phew* I'm certainly glad you proved your own stupidity.

Now go vote for the idiot who supported the Iraq War, a war that killed over a million with nothing positive stemming from it. Because, lord knows, you abhor violence in all its forms. Hillary 2016!

Hypocrite.

@179 I am not sure how you arrive at the conclusion that Carter was going somewhere different than Reagan considering the state of labor in the industries that Carter deregulated. Since deregulation, these industries killed millions of middle class jobs. People lost jobs and pensions because of deregulation, not because of the marginal tax rate.

@168 Alternately, Venomlash, how do you feel about the Saudis? Better or worse than Napoleon? A vote for Hillary is a vote for the Saudis.

How about Israel's attacking Palestinian encampments? A vote for Hillary is a vote for Bibi.

Literally, where does your "no violence leads anywhere good" stance take you? How destroyed is your conscience that you can vote for those warmongers, but yet you say that the French Revolution was a complete waste and ridicule anybody who says otherwise?

I should be the one voting for Hillary and you should be the one defending the Greens, but this fucked up two party system has you on the wrong side of the fence.

@184: "Is the starvation of the poor less important than the lives of the rich?...People were already dying before the revolution...the revolution just changed the who."
RIGHT FUCKING THERE, you claimed that it was the poor dying before the revolution and the rich afterwards. Do I need to spell it out for you in a bowl of alphabet soup?

"lord knows, you abhor violence in all its forms"
"no violence leads anywhere good"
Yeah, I'm not so imbecilic as to think that. As a Member of the Tribe, I'm quite aware that violence perpetrated by American soldiers is why my people are still alive on this planet. Say, weren't you just bitching about me allegedly putting words in your mouth? Nice hypocrisy, you dimwit. I'm no hippy-dippy-ultra-pacifist, despite what you may erroneously believe.

@186: "A vote for Hillary is a vote for the Saudis"
I'll spare you the part where I usually ask you to defend your assertion with facts and reasoning, since I already know the whole bullshit screed you'll give me about how the State Department under Clinton sold arms to Saudi Arabia, a country that is an asshole but also a key ally in a region full of assholes, just as it's done for decades. (Feel free to prove me wrong!) But even if I were to accept that claim, I'd much rather vote for the candidate who will support a repressive theocratic monarchy than the one who will actively consider using nuclear weapons against humans. I am under no illusions as to the viability of third-party candidates; the choice is between Clinton (a flawed but fundamentally satisfactory candidate) and Trump (a candidate who is not only wrong on every issue but who has no idea how to govern).

"How destroyed is your conscience that you can vote for those warmongers, but yet you say that the French Revolution was a complete waste and ridicule anybody who says otherwise?"
The French Revolution was a near-complete waste not because people died, but because people died for nothing. Civilians were rounded up and summarily executed in a massive political purge, the grand ideals of the revolution quickly devolved into chaos, and a new monarchy came to power without ceding substantial ground to the common people.
And you want to compare that to a war that the legislature authorized after having been directly lied to by the executive they should have been able to trust above all others? I'm prepared to forgive Hillary Clinton for having been deceived by the massive misinformation campaign waged by the Bush 43 administration to fabricate a just case for invading Iraq.
And just to clarify, I'm ridiculing you not because you believe that the French Revolution made significant progress; I'm ridiculing you because you're hilariously ignorant of what actually happened back in the day.

"I should be the one voting for Hillary and you should be the one defending the Greens"
How clearly do I have to lay it out for you that I don't vote for anti-science nutters? I AM A SCIENTIST PURSUING A RESEARCH CAREER IN ACADEMIA. I DO NOT LEND MY SUPPORT TO POLITICAL GROUPS THAT ACTIVELY OPPOSE RESEARCH AND SCIENTIFIC ADVANCEMENT AND THAT ATTEMPT TO DELEGITIMIZE FIELDS OF STUDY THAT CONFLICT WITH THEIR POLITICAL STANCES. If this year's election were a head-to-head matchup between Clinton and Stein, with no other candidates in the race, I WOULD FUCKING VOTE CLINTON AND BE PROUD OF IT.

I am slowly educating myself on the Green Party and I agree with a lot of there issues. I really like Jill Stein and what she stands for.

Great piece. I'll be forwarding it to friends and family of mine. I always respond, when asked about the Nader/Gore election, that the only press you ever see in response to this are from people who blame Nader. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/article… You never hear other left perspectives on this because they go against the two party power structures formed and invested in by those who exert the most political power: corporations, banks, and media outlets with near bottomless pockets. What regular person can compete with that? What about the perspective felt by many that the Democrats had not offered a candidate who was tough enough on corruption? Ahhhh, because that would place the blame on the DNC. Oh no! No, my response is placing the blame where the blame actually lies and where it clearly lies this election too, with two political parties who think they can give us yet another corporatist, militarist, and oligarchical candidate, they can continue to get away with saying they're for or against something but not really trying to change anything, and everything will be hunky-dory. If I am to vote for one of two parties because what I truly want is there not to be two parties am I really contributing to a solution? I saw the blame of Hillary supporters on Bernie supporters coming two months in advance. Because they have supported a candidate who broke multiple classified information laws and lied to the FBI at least 4 times about it and did not support a candidate who poll after poll after poll for 6 months showed crushing Trump, we Bernie supporters are to blame. Does that make sense to anyone? Isn't it also precious, Savage's condescension, in referring to anyone who does not support a lying criminal who is grossly inconsistent, mushrooms in shit. That'll teach us. It has always been my goal in life not for Mr. Savage to see me as a mushroom in shit.

@187 Interpret what you want to interpret out of that phrase. You're just shoving your own shit into my mouth, as you usually do. Sorry, I don't flag brown.

Let me quote you:
"-Mass executions of TENS OF THOUSANDS of political prisoners and other dissidents
-Years of chaos and turmoil
But it was a success because the new monarchy did a few good things, right?"

The French Revolution had tangible benefits before Napoleon went off on the Napoleonic war. But, because there was violence, you seem ready to write them all off.

Meanwhile, here in the present, millions of lives have been extinguished, years of turmoil happen in a region, with no benefits anywhere in sight, and the best you can say of one of the authorizers is "flawed but fundamentally satisfactory?" And, you fluff off one of the most murderous regimes of our time as a "repressive theocratic monarchy"?!!?!?

Get the fuck out of here. You're joking right? This is some sick fucked up prank, right? Are you being ironic or a corrupt moron? That you can be all "the French Revolution was unjustifiable and had no benefits because it devolved into chaos" but then flip around and be all "so, she says she was lied to? I'm perfectly willing to swallow her lies because what else am I going to do? And she gets millions from a 'repressive theocratic monarchy' that has slaughtered thousands and forced back the hands of modernization? Meh. #NeverTrump"

This is why I weep for this country.

Savage is excellent at writing off and disparaging people to the Left of him. If he paid any serious attention, he'd actually know that nearly every state has an active Green Party. They have won over the years, in various levels of government. But his goal here is part and parcel of the DNC strategy-- piss on Leftists for the shortcomings of your own shitty candidate. And that is the sum total of the substance of the Democratic Party in 2016. I personally will vote for Hillary, but not because I am happy about it. On the other hand, Savage has been shitting on the Greens since Nader, using the same specious arguments, year in and year out-- because despite his pithy rhetoric, Savage is kind of a visionless asshole with a tenuous grasp on history.

Dan Savage is a complete idiot. He espouses facts as is they're facts when they aren't. Not to mention he's so obtuse in the way he speaks, he comes off as an arrogant talking head with nothing to add to the conversation.

Here's are the facts:

The Green Party has had hundreds of candidates put in a position in government; from dog catcher to county commissioners, on school boards, to Mayors.

In 2016 it's more important than ever to realize that what Bernie Sanders did by endorsing Hillary Clinton, was he made it clear to his followers that the Democratic party is corrupt as Hillary is, and that by his endorsement, he has turned millions of his supporters, (which he knew he would) into supporting a third party.

So now the most viable candidate that supports many key issues that Bernie supported, has a much better advantage than ever; and that is Jill Stein.

Until Dan Savage understands the positive impact that the Green Party and Jill Stein is making in these revolutionary times, he'll sit on the sidelines and spew his venom to try and convince that a corrupted establishment politician with an ongoing investigation is our best hope as president.

Meanwhile, the political revolution continues!

@193:

Get back to us when those "hundreds of candidates put in a position in government; from dog catcher to county commissioners, on school boards, to Mayors" becomes THOUSANDS of elected officials (preferably in more than 2 states), because, if THIS is the best they can do after 32 years of trying, and if all they can do in 2016 is field a measly 118 CANDIDATES (not elected, just running, and that includes Stein & her VP selection), then they're not doing squat, and nobody except the most ideologically pure of the true-believers is going to give them the time of day.

@142 Again, reading comprehension. I was saying that I was talking to Dan because you said "We already covered this long ago", when you didn't even cover everything I said in that post, and to this day you ignore those other things. Now maybe you're new to this "reading comprehension" you keep seeing, but you could use Google to get you on the right track.

Tell me how else people find out about candidates other than coverage? The Green presidential candidates have been locked out of the televised debates, when it is supposed to be a nonpartisan debate. It is not fair that these candidates that receive big corporate money get more coverage, sometimes even free coverage, than anyone who doesn't have that much money. Because THAT is what determines the effectiveness of a political party in our current system.

Relevance is about truth, no matter how you slice it.

@194 Again, you are conflating failure to succeed with whether another party is necessary to apply pressure on Democrats. It seems like an elementary fault in logic.

@195/196:

Um, you do it the same way the big pants Parties do: you go door-to-door with your message; you phone bank; you send out mailings; you set up booths in public spaces and at community events; you hold rallies and regular meetings of your Party Organization to bring in new members; you reach out to your communities and form alliances with those who share your values and aspirations; you access local media; and most importantly you run candidates for office, not a few here-and-there, but in as many races as are available. That's the literal definition of "grass-roots organizing". And that last part is crucial because candidates get to submit statements to voters guides articulating their platform; they get to request and be interviewed by community, labor, and constituency groups for endorsements; they get to participate in debates, forums, and town hall meetings; they even get interviewed by local media - when there is an actual person running running from a Party TO be interviewed.

The simple reason Stein isn't being taken seriously by the NATIONAL media is because she isn't a serious national candidate. The Greens have NO appreciable state organizations or structures; they have NO significant penetration at the local level (aside from very minor inroads into N CA and a bit in the LA basin); they have almost NO name recognition; and they apparently have NO actual strategy or program in place to achieve any of these goals. You keep whinging about how the national media refuses to take the GP seriously, but what is the GP actually DOING to show they're worthy of serious consideration? So far as I, and presumably many others, can tell, not fucking much - except complain.

As for conflating failure with the need to apply pressure, well, if the Greens can't even bother to run candidates (and only covering 118 out of 511,000 possible elective offices is simply ridiculous on its face) then they have no pressure TO apply, Under those circumstances the GP is NOT the party of necessity here - how can they possibly be with such a pitiful track-record over so many years? That may be their aspiration, but they're doing crap to actualize it - and in politics nobody gets handed the cookie without having to work for it first.

In order to apply pressure, you have to have something to apply pressure WITH. If the GP really wants to exert influence on the Democrats, they first have to build up some serious internal pressure of their own, but I for one don't see any effort on their part to make that happen. Right now the GP is the political equivalent of a dripping sink faucet that thinks it's a fire hose. They have absolutely nothing to bring to bear and yet they STILL think they deserve to be treated like an actual, functioning national Political Force regardless. It's all just ego, privilege, and hubris on their part, and frankly, it's pathetic.

If the GP wants to sit at the adult table, then they need to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work that earns them a seat there, and stop blaming others for their own ineffectiveness, ineptitude, and lack of motivation,

@191: You claimed that before the revolution, poor people were dying, and after the revolution it was the rich people who were dying. EXACTLY HOW ELSE is one supposed to interpret that boneheaded assertion? Riddle me THAT.

"But, because there was violence, you seem ready to write them all off."
I guess the alphabet soup approach will be necessary, you DENSE motherfucker. I am not characterizing the French Revolution as a failure because it involved violence, but rather because the violence was:
-arbitrary, without purpose or rationale
-disproportionate, with the purported benefits of the revolution being far eclipsed in scope by the massive loss of life, and
-ultimately fruitless, with no clear improvements to show for the tremendous cost in lives
IT IS NOT VIOLENCE IN AND OF ITSELF THAT I OPPOSE, BUT THE SENSELESS AND WASTEFUL APPLICATION THEREOF. If you wish to argue with me, I shall have to insist that you READ what is WRITTEN.

"millions of lives have been extinguished"
Not actually true, buddy! The highest estimates of TOTAL CASUALTIES of the Iraq War top out at several hundred thousand to maybe one million. It's this careless, dare I say Trumpian, disregard for factual accuracy that gets you into trouble.
Also, you think I'm sugar-coating it by describing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a "repressive theocratic monarchy"? Bitch please. Are you even familiar with the meanings of those words, to make such a laughable claim?

And once more, I must remind you not to put your words in my mouth. My claim was never that the French Revolution was "unjustifiable", but rather that it was unsuccessful. (Compare to the War in Afghanistan: we had a perfectly good reason to go in there, but ended up screwing the pooch due in large part to rushing off to fight a whole different war.) Nor is it simply "she [Hillary Clinton] says she was lied to"; the deception practiced by the Bush Administration at the time is well-documented fact.
Yeah, never mind that she nearly a decade ago disavowed her vote authorizing military force, that she pilloried George W. Bush for having "rushed to war" even before that, or that she described her 2002 vote AT THE TIME as a reluctant one, hoping that the authorization would serve as diplomatic leverage and that the situation would not come to armed conflict. Never mind any of that; it goes against your narrative of "Clinton secretly wants to bomb everyone" (paraphrased) to know or to admit such.

That's just ignorant ranting. Both the Green Party and the Libertarian Party have slogged for years doing the hard work of building a party. There are candidates for lower offices and elected officials right now. And there would be more of them if there wasn't abject hysteria and screaming rudeness at their every attempt to do the crazy things of, I don't know, maybe marriage equality and prison reform and an end to the drug war. With little help from famous people with lots of media reach make fun of them, call them assholes...

Save the shrill finger pointing for the actual fucking enemy. Third party members have been on the right side of every social issue all along, unlike the DNC who as of 2008 were still arguing marriage should be a right reserved for heterosexual couples. Reminder of who was running on that fucking platform needed? Clinton.

Nothing changes if nothing changes. You think the choices are not great now with Trump and Clinton? Wait ten, fifteen, twenty years and see what asshats we get because we were pussies and would not vote for the people we knew were right but were too afraid to get behind.

@197 Why don't you scrap the left wing of the Democratic party since they haven't been successful? oh, you did by pushing for Clinton from the get go. Is it coincidental? I think not.

I've always noticed that comedians who are not very skilled need to swear a lot to make an impression. Same with Savage except the impression is of a vulgar, no nothing who is angry that idealistic people don't agree with him. Please stop giving him attention!

Comte@147: Your unwillingness to take polls seriously has absolutely no bearing on whether rational people take them seriously.

Comte@147: One other thing. Whether Stein can get 5% of the vote nationally is irrelevant. What's relevant is if she can get enough votes in Florida or Ohio to swing the state (she's currently not on the ballot in Pennsylvania or Virginia, two other key states),

There is only one thing that can bring America back from the brink at this point: the election of Donald Trump to the office of President of the United States.

Now this may seem counterintuitive to anyone with half a brain, but hear me out. President Donald Trump won't save the nation because he'll keep his bizarre promises. He will save our nation because he can't. If he loses this election, his movement of hatred, ignorance, racism and narcissistic self indulgence will continue to fester, grow and gain legitimacy. Everything will be blamed on Hillary Clinton and "rigged" elections.

So I say wholeheartedly, DONALD TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT! That piece of inhuman garbage needs to be given enough rope to hang himself and take his idiot followers with him.

@204: If you want to risk your own fortunes for four years of Donald Trump, that's your business. But I personally don't want to spend the next few years of MY life wondering if tomorrow is the day the big mushrooms start to grow, and I imagine a lot of other Americans feel similarly.

The discussion leaves out the issue of campaign financing and widespread bribery in the Democratic Party, with Clinton taking more bribes than any other politician in American history. As the recent DNC leaks show, "finance directors" basically volley these offers - including one in which Barack Obama recently refused 350,000 dollars in bribes for a 20 minute "addition" to a speaking appearance.

We are not getting what we want and we need out here. We should be put in a position where we should be continuously negotiating and arm-twisting with a politican party owned by the most corrupt and venemous interests - also - in all of American history.

Jimmy Carter - who went the route some describe - is similarly appalled by how bad things have gotten. He has come out and said that there is NO functioning democracy in the U.S. anymore. He has NOT really endorsed Clinton. He said that Clinton during her time in the State Department did "very little" to bring about peace.

I gotta say - that when someone like Jimmy Carter is saying that much - you really do have your head stuck in the sands if you think this is the same old, same old.

Wake up, people.

Great, Dan, 99% percent right, but -- if Trump somehow gets to 270, everyone will suffer, white, rainbow, dark matter, neutron stars, every quark on every vibratory level. Because this cockroach will start a trade conflict or declare war or shoot an atomic elephant gun whenever some measley furriner irritates his scalp. Then when things don't work out quite right, he'll go, "Whoa -- Chapter 11 time!" The four horsemen are fastening their cloaks with his campaign buttons.

@197 Um, the "big pants Parties" do not go door to door for most people, I only get calls from major local politicians on election day, like most people, they're are hardly any advertised meetings by major parties, and partly because the Democrats demonized third parties, there are hardly any Greens around to meet and discuss policy amongst themselves in most places, which is changing, but they do have meetings and rallies where I live and all over New York, and they put notices before those events where they are allowed. I was at one of those rallies.

I knew about many local Green politicians before Jill pointed them out, but read up on the Green Party of New York State, New Paltz in particular if you think only North Cali and LA are the only places where Greens have had a "significant penetration at the local level", if not just relatively in your view.

Greens have protested many things on the ground with many people of different political background. The Greens are committed to what they believe. They do not just complain, as you suggest they do.

Every Green Party has a strategy, they always did. These people stuck with the Green Party for so long because they have heart. They try so hard to get their views across through any of the media, because even local media hardly, if ever chooses to cover the Greens, and it is not fair because the Democrats and Republicans have been around for much longer, and to suggest that the four biggest parties in the United States were given equal footing to be successful from their beginnings, is rather ignorant, since Ralph Nader said himself that it is hard to make big changes nowadays like he did decades ago.

How was he able to make Nixon accept the EPA? Safety regulations as big as what followed the passage of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Congress less than a year after his book was published? There is more work to be done with auto safety today, with Europe having some better ratings than the cars being sold in the US, but that is caused by the issue of not being able to make too big of changes that easily anymore, even if you are a big group of people.

The major parties always get television coverage, and the networks air the commercials, and they do not get silenced like the Greens do. That is why people are that much more familiar with local major party candidates, which hardly anyone cares at all about as it is, than any single third-party challenger.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Pa…

I wholeheartedly agree with Savage about problem but not solution...the issue is not whether Greens are worthy of spoiling a Dem's shot at President if they will only also organize at the grassroots; the solution/activism must focus on changing our electoral system. Until we have Constitutional change to a run-off election system, 3rd parties will remain spoilers, period.

There is no way to have a viable third party in the context of our election structure. District based, first place wins, means that whenever there's a three-way race there is a good chance the least-preferred candidate will sneak a plurality and win. Most people will realize this and ultimately move away from their first choice if that person has no chance to win. Two parties is the only stable equilibrium. If you want a multiparty system you have to have either party-list elections or runoffs. There is no way around this. There just isn't.

If the Green Party had any sense, they would stay away from the presidency and focus solely on challenging Democrats in areas where Republicans can't break a third of the vote even in a good year. Then they'd have a chance of getting a foothold and actually achieving something instead of just yelling into the wind and dividing the left for nothing. Thanks so much for saying all this, Dan.

I read the transcript and listened to the original podcast, and I think Our Dear Dan is spot on. He said everything that needs to be said about the Greens, and about third parties in general.

Personally, I find Jill Stein to be an unpleasant, smug, scold. I agree with her on several of her positions, but think that she's just a grandstanding non-entity, politically speaking.

@208:

I was a Precinct Committee Officer (PCO) and on the Executive Board for the 32nd District Democrats in North Seattle for several years and "neighbor-to-neighbor" door-to-dooring was one of the most basic activities we undertook, because at the legislative district level, it's widely understood that personal contact is fundamental to the process of engaging voters. Maybe you just haven't been home when they knocked on your door.

But it does make me wonder: if the Green Party WANTS, I mean SERIOUSLY wants, to be a national party, why aren't they doing more to build their party structure from the ground up? Sure, there are so-called "Local Green Party" affiliates, but how much actual outreach do they do? You say you've NEVER seen a Democrat at your door, well I'm sure most of the citizens of King County could say exactly the same thing about not seeing a member of the GP. It just seems like they don't do well at the grass-roots level, which is exactly where they need to be strongest. You don't build a house by hammering together the roof first and then trying to put everything else underneath it, but that pretty much seems to be their strategy, so far as I can tell at least.

As for lack of media coverage: dude, this is freaking 2016. If you're still depending on "traditional media" to spread your message, you're doing it very wrong. Don't use that as a crutch or an excuse; there are plenty of other ways to reach out to fellow travelers nowadays, and if you're NOT doing that, it's a problem. If you ARE doing that and still not seeing that groundswell of support you seem to believe is out there for your cause, then maybe it's not the medium that's the problem, eh?

Yeah, you can't be a major party unless you do the hard work. That's how the the Democrats and Republicans got where they are. Why, not a day goes by that I don't stop and admire all that good honest work that these two parties did to earn their places in our two party system.

The whole system is based on merit, people.

@213:

And your (and by extension the Green Party's) solution is to change that - how, exactly? You suck at getting your message out, many of your fellow party members seem hell-bent on alienating anyone who doesn't follow in lock-step with 100% of your platform (because, unlike Democrats, you conflate compromise with capitulation), you can't get your proverbial shit together to even bother to run candidates in anything remotely resembling a statistically significant number, and like most idealogues you overwhelmingly appear to be insufferably confident in the inherent superiority of your position to the point that you look down with morally-indignant disdain on anyone who doesn't subscribe to 100% of your viewpoint without apparently ever catching onto the very obvious concept that 99.9% of EVERYONE doesn't subscribe 100% to your viewpoint on literally any issue you care to address. And yet you STILL can't figure out why you continue to be a third-tier, perpetual also-ran party of no significance, more than 30 years after your founding.

So just stop, stop blaming the Democrats for your own inability to connect with voters, because, there are really only two reasons why that's the case: 1. Either your message doesn't resonate with them, or; 2. You're just really bad at communicating it. Neither of those are the fault of anyone else. You can gripe about lack of access to the media, lack of access to federal campaign matching-funds, lack of access to the system in general, but seriously, I just don't see you-all putting in much effort in trying to actually GET access in any of those areas. Instead, you whine and complain because you seem to think it should just be handed to you without any effort on your part, and that is not now, nor ever has been, how gaining access to anything, whether it be the media, the system, the national dialog, the mind of the American Voter, literally ANYTHING works.