I mean, WTF? You have two parties because of the voting system, which means that the more candidates support a particular idea, the worse they do. So your plan is to make things worse in the short term, in the hope that it will create a new party or “cause change from the outside” in some mysterious way.

The Christian Conservatives are nuts, but they understand how to drive the process. Instead of starting with a load of mad, self-defeating strategery at the top, you need to start at the bottom. Run for the school boards, Volunteer for the jobs nobody wants to do. Take power from the bottom up.

If you want a new party, go ahead and build it, but there’s no point in even thinking about messing with national politics until you’ve taken a state. And when you do it, fix the voting system there, so people don’t have to choose between you and the lesser of two evils.

So, I am looking for more independents in this pile to change things from the outside. The two parties can not be reformed. They must be displaced and disposed of. Time is ticking, too. I am reading more and more about how the US is looking more and more like pre-war Germany and Japan in that the government is implementing policies to undermine the very foundational documents on which the country rests (specifically referring to the writings of Chomsky, Van Wolferen, and Bix on that point). So, I am well beyond the Democrats vs the Republicans at this point. I am much more interested in the issues that transcend specific administrations, such as monetary policy and foreign policy.

Jim’s other thought is: Strategically, maybe it’s better to have the left in opposition and the right in government, because that would stop the left overlooking outrageous things that the government does, which there are certainly a lot of, like WARRANT-LESS KILLER ROBOTS. It’s certainly true that the left is better at criticizing these things when the right is in power, and the right is better at criticizing them when the left in power. When you elect a president from one party, you largely de-claw the opposition from within that party, and leave it to people within the opposition party to do the opposing.

But that’s where Jim loses me. I mean, it’s not like the US has some kind of extraordinarily successful libertarian left that strikes terror into its political enemies, if only it can be persuaded to train its guns on them. The American libertarian left have to be pretty much the least-feared lobby in the history of politics. Them opposing something actually makes it less likely to happen, because the right reflexively oppose anything coming from the left even if it’s banning the president from sending a robot to kill them, and centrist Democrats love a chance to look bi-partisan by punching a hippy.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say the libertarian right are effective, but they’re not doing too badly. Ron Paul seems to be pretty much monopolizing the younger end of the Republican coalition. It’ll take some time before his views have a lot of influence on their platform, but they’re in a much stronger position than they were four years ago.

Anyhow, if Jim thinks losing the presidency will cause the left to put the things he wants in the platform they end up running for election on he hasn’t been paying attention. If the Democrats lose to the Republicans they’ll conclude that the problem is that they need to be more like Republicans. And not the Ron Paul part.

Another factor is that I no longer live in the US, so my views about the country have changed substantially. I`m no longer exposed to American propaganda (good, bad, otherwise) via all media types (news, movies, television, commercials, corporate, etc), and I view the country largely through a foreign policy perspective, which is obviously very different from how the country is portrayed to Americans living inside the country. When I travel to the US these days I find the experience rather shocking. To me this was a big change and in which I was totally unprepared. But I went through it, painfully, and am very much on the other side now.

You may have a point on the court, though, but I don`t follow that closely enough to have a strong opinion. I`m sure it will be a big campaign issues, so I will study up on it when the issues come up.

I hope I`m wrong on all this, but I suspect I have a strong position (at least on the monetary/military issues). I also suspect that my opinion (or conversations like this in general) won`t matter much since we don`t decide. How`s that for cynical? The key factor to watch is donations to the two campaigns from financial institutions. They decided in 2008 and they will decide in 2012.