Reply #22: There is much to

[necso]

what you say.

But to fracture the Democratic Party now is to break the one real "army" in the field against the extremist-led horde. -- We might as well engage in some suicide-death duel (like Hannibal's generals did when facing final ruin) on a massive scale.

And there are other ways to break the corporate hold on the Democratic Party. The nomination process is not that difficult to come into control of (particularly when the Party is on its heels). And organizations outside of the Party (and that also can operate within it) can have significant influence on who gets nominated and what policy gets set (in people's minds and therefore on the playing field) and how it gets talked about(!).

What we are lacking now is a powerful organization (or better, organizations -- and leaders) that will go out there and really start shaking things up -- as opposed to playing it safe -- or just offering up that same old wine, albeit in new bottles (even the best vintage gets jaded to the palate).

If you can make big enough waves, then eventually they will rock everybody's boat. It's what the neocons did, only we have to do it faster -- and this means doing it smarter.

Of course, this would require the cooperation of a goodly number of people -- but people often follow leaders, and one or two national figures could go a long way in this direction. That is, they could if they were willing (and able) to shake the cobwebs out of their heads -- and to take a chance... and to do their damn duty.

And a multi-party competition is better suited to a system where the leader of the state is selected by the elected representatives and not by the (even indirect) vote of the people. In our circumstances (and if we fractured on more or less natural party lines), we would probably end up either having Presidents elected by some extremist (minority) group (particularly if we switched to a direct vote plurality system) or with the selection ending up in the House -- an event that people would be unhappy with and which could color the presidency as somehow being illegitimate (or so it would be made to seem to many).