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It's time you stopped depending on your TeeVee for information; the corporate media won't provide any that is useful.

The parties exist.
http://www.therealdifference.org/issues.html
http://www.rpusa.info/platform.htm
http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/home/about-us/platform
It's up to *you* to make one of them a major party.
Stop voting for the lesser of the status-quo evils.

gewg_ (CAPTCHA: mutable)

The half of Libertarianism that seems OK to me is more than offset by the other half.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Ron_Paul

My question for you is "Do you still vote for NeoLiberals?".
The Reds are obviously slammed up against the Fascist wall, but the Blues are continuing to shift to the Right--in defiance of the 2008 vote for a change that moves away from Fascism/NeoFeudalism.
I don't see a dime's worth of difference between those two parties.
OTOH, http://tinyurl.com/Green-vs-Red-and-Blue
(cache of http://www.therealdifference.org/issues.html).

...and do you still go to corporate media for "news"?
http://google.com/search?q=Pacifica+KPFA+KPFK+WBAI+WPFW+KPFT

gewg_ (CAPTCHA: churned)

there's not a significant social democratic left party in the US

...depending on your definition of "significant", of course.
http://www.therealdifference.org/issues.html

The most likely candidate for a social democratic party in the US is the Green Party
.
Bingo! The party's 2008 Presidential candidate constantly points to the failings of the Democrats (and, of course, those of the Republicans).
.
Cynthia McKinney blasts the Press for calling Obama's war escalation an "exit" Plan
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/National_News_2/article_6653.shtml
.
Cynthia McKinney blasts Obama's response in Haiti as "Katrina redux"
http://sfbayview.com/2010/from-cynthia-mckinney-an-unwelcome-katrina-redux/
.
Cynthia McKinney blasts Obama's admistration on the Shirley Sherrod affair
http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=334
.
More:
http://www.gp.org/cynthia/index.php
.
gewg_ (CAPTCHA:quagmire)

It's called "speaking your mind" aka "expressing an opinion".
...and in 1992, a guy who wasn't declared Red or Blue got 19 percent of the votes.

As for Ron Paul, Libertarianism (aka less government) is why we have the British Petroleum fiasco in the Gulf. (Thanks, Ronald Reagan; thanks, James Watt.)

The candidate these folks want was on the ballot in 2008: Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, representing the Green Party.
http://www.therealdifference.org/issues.html
Folks who were torn between voting for the first black president or the first woman president could have done BOTH.

gewg_ (CAPTCHA: prosper)

There is just no party to speak for me.

Well, not if you are stuck in the "2-party system" mentality.
http://www.therealdifference.org/issues.html

gewg_ (CAPTCHA: atheists)

http://therealdifference.org/

I think that Kerry said it best when he said he don't want to lead a party that loves jobs, but hates the ones that creates them in a recent Money magazine interview. He also suggested giving targeted tax cuts to businesses as incentives to not to outsource.

According to the issues page, Green Party seems to be a party that loves job AND hates the ones that creates them. Isn't Green Party discouring people from starting their own businesses and creating jobs when they'll be labeled as "evil rich" and pay ultra high levels of tax as the punishment when their business takes off? And won't $10 proposed minium wage encourge outsourcing?

Speaking as a respectibly left wing Democrat,

Feeling lonely these days?

Nader has simply shown zero ability for that kind of a job.

No worries there. Apparently, the Presidency has no requirements whatsoever these days. But seriously, Nader thinks deeply, speaks clearly, and acts decisively. He also happens to be brutally honest, a quality we haven't had in a President since... well, ever.

As a Green, I hope to see someone other Ralph nominated in 2004, and I even started a website to that effect. But I'll always remeber how good it felt to vote for Nader. I have no regrets.

When he says there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, he's either lying, or an idiot.

Go back and check your facts. You never actually heard him say that. You only heard second-hand that he had said it. In fact, what he really said was that the difference wasn't enough to make a difference. Close, but not the same statement.

What we have today is a far-right party up against a center-right party. There's your difference.

Leadership requires the right mix of idealism and pragmatism, and Nader badly fails that test.

Are you kidding? Nader has saved more lives than Gore and Bush added together, or for that matter, multiplied. You have to be an idealist to take on corporate power, and you have to be a pragmatist to win, not just once, but over and over.

There's not an idealist among the Democratic would-bes, and W wouldn't know an idea if it bit him on the nose.

If he actually WON the presidency, he'd be disasterous at it.

Right, he'd probably do disastrous things like see that poor people have health care and education, that wilderness areas are protected, that corporate monopolies are controlled, that foreign conflicts are handled with civility and diplomacy. Not like the enlightened path we're currently on.

And since even he knows that he isn't going to win,

Wrong. The Green Party didn't take the White House in 2000, but we did grow explosively. We became a household word. And in 2002, we ran more candidates (and had more wins) than we did with Nader. That's a win.

running mainly makes him just the Perot-of-the-left, working as a spoiler to get Bush reelected.

Hey, is it Nader's fault the sitting VP of a very popular President couldn't beat an ex-cokehead who's dumber than Dan Quayle put together? Is it Nader's fault Gore couldn't win his own freaking home state? Or Clinton's?

People knew the risks of not voting for Gore. Yet 2.7 million of us took the risk (and probably twice as many again thought seriously about it). The overwhelming majority would do so again, and many who voted for Gore will vote Green next time. You call it spoiling, I call it standing up for what you believe in.

If you want our votes in 2004, here's what to do: steal our platform. Go ahead. We arrived at it in an unusually democratic fashion, but we'd be happy to see you adopt it in any way. Our ideas are what draw people to us, and if you want to draw them back, you now know how.

One last thing... ask a local Green what IRV is.