Now do you understand why so many of us termed our vote as being for the lesser of two evils?

[MadHound]

245. I agree with the issue of money and the "obligation" that it brings to elected office,

I have long been of the mind that we need publicly financed elections for every office from dogcatcher to president. A candidate gets X amount of money, X amount of free air time(the airwaves are, after all, still part of the public domain, at least nominally) and X amount of months to conduct their campaign(that way candidates don't start running for the next election as soon as the old one ends).

However I disagree with the premise that having another party in the mix is a bad thing or even an impossible thing. Parties have fallen, risen, switched ideologies and been consigned to the dust bin of history. The way things are headed, we'll most likely end of with three parties, a left, a right and the center, consisting of moderate 'Pugs and the Third Way/neo liberal/ conservative blue dog Dems. The party structure as it is simply can't hold.

The point of trying to change the party from within the party system is long gone, bought and paid for by that very system you and I decry. Thus, one has to start looking to effect change from outside the system. That can be a long term proposition, or as in the case of the fall of the Whigs and rise of the Republicans, a relatively short term one. Either way, the people had to start somewhere, namely voting for what was originally considered a "splinter" party. Sure, you might suffer some short term setbacks and defeats, but in the long term you come out ahead.