Here's why advocating third party votes for president annoys me.

[TreasonousBastard]

25. The right wing started years ago infiltrating school boards...

town councils and other low level elected offices to build a base and get experienced candidates. There was a lot of talk about it a while ago, but all that seems to have stopped when we started focusing on the White House and Senate.

A REALLY long time ago Robert LaFollette and Teddy Roosevelt got the Progressive Party going, and with hundreds of politicians, including a lot of gubernatorial candidates, running as Progressives, one would have thought they would have had a shot. No good, though. Even TR couldn't pull it off-- the two main parties were too organized and where is the Progressive Party now?

Our local Democratic Party has been trying to revitalize itself, but we just got our asses seriously kicked in the last election. Out of 19 elected positions townwide, we have one Democrat in office. One overwhelming problem we have is that things are working reasonably well, so why change? Very few are willing to throw away the decent stuff we have for promises of a somewhat better, if ill-defined, future.

Things are so one-sided here that we actually had to advertise for candidates. We did some really good ones, but two of the best were Republicans who ran on our line! Still lost, though.

So, we've got some work to do. We've got a good Democratic Congressman and two Senators. The County has a Democratic executive now, and he's doing a great job so far. We just have to get back to our roots and rebuild things from the ground up.

I'm ranting on... I'll stop now.