Thanks, my thoughts exactly.

Wow. Just wow. Great letter. They don't change, you know. So I guess the question comes back to either "settling" for a marriage in which YOU do all the compromise and sacrifice or trying to figure out a viable way of making it work without the marriage.

I do think that if the Democrats know they can't take us for granted (e.g., that we will vote for pro-choice Republicans or greens or libertarians) they would make a little more effort to embrace the civil rights of women, gays, and people of color.

On the other hand, our entrenched two-party system makes it very hard to move out of the dichotomy of the evil Republicans and the lesser-of-two evils Democrats.

Democrats want my vote, they can earn it. But so long as they decide, why bother earning votes when we can convince them we're all they've got? I'd rather lose on someone worth voting for, than win on someone who's not. 'Cause if he wins, what do I get?

Any man is not better than no man. Any winning candidate is not better than a losing candidate. I didn't waste a vote on Kerry--what would I get if he won, besides the miniscule satisfaction that I picked the winner? Voting isn't a pick-who-you-think-will-win deal like betting is. Whether I voted for Kerry or Nader, I would have been disappointed, not because Kerry lost, but because Nader lost, because the best guy for the job didn't have a chance at it.

The Democrats said a vote for a third-party candidate was a wasted vote. For awhile I thought they meant that having who you voted for win, was more important than having who you wanted win. Now, I think they mean, wasted, because it was a liberal vote that they didn't get to make use of to elect a Democrat. And they think they have some sort of right to all the liberal votes. After all, they're not Republicans.

The only wasted vote is an uncast one. A vote for Nader is not wasted; it's a vote, not for a president, but for a change in the power structure. It's a vote for the Democrats to start earning liberal votes if they want to keep them, and it's a vote for the possibility of someone worth voting for next time. To vote for a third-party candidate is to encourage more third-party candidates, to take the decision of who you get to vote for out of the hands of the Democrats and into the hands of the voters.

I should've come up with this rant a year ago. Stupid Democrats, thinking I'd actually give my support to a pro-life, pro-war, conservative-butt-kissing privileged Republican Lite elitist, just because he's slightly better than a pro-life, pro-war, conservative-butt-kissing privileged Republican elitist, when there's a truly pro-choice, anti-war, woman-friendly, environment-friendly labor and safety advocate sitting there on the ballot? They might as well tell me to get back in the kitchen 'cause sexism will always be there. Fat fucking chance.

it would be nice if there were a single entity called the "democrats" but one of the big problems of our party is how diverse we are. in fact, it drives people crazy just how many different perspectives are involved in our party. there is scarcely anything we can think of as solidly and inarguably democratic.

the same thing goes for the leadership of the party. we have a very diverse leadership. some of them are very old school, and the sooner they retire or get replaced with progressives, then so much the better (imo). we also have leaders who take no crap from the Rs -- howard dean being the most prominent -- and who will stand for the right things, no matter what. thinking of the congress as the leadership of the party is a big, big mistake. they just get quoted by the msm. my democratic senator, ron wyden, is not even close to a leader among the progressive demos in oregon. our gov, who chooses to play it safe, is thoroughly disliked by much of the 'roots. the leaders in oregon are peter defazio and john kitzhaber, both dems who stand up strong for progressive values -- who have the guts to say what needs to be said.

and we are getting more of those kinds of leaders -- because we at the 'roots are working for them, are insisting on them. it's easy to whine about the leadership and all their faults. leaders have the power followers give them -- and here in oregon, we so-called followers are the ones deciding who the leaders are. and if they want to remain leaders, they better follow us! which means ron wyden's days are numbered; we're sick of his pseudo-centrist crap. but we're not going to whine about it; we're going to get rid of him and elect us a progressive. like dean says, we have the power.