Reply #31: What I am trying to tell you is that ballot access is irrelevant...

[stevenleser]

Again I say to you, if the 50-75 million Democrats dont want to vote for them, and the 50-75 million Republicans dont want to vote for them, where are they going to get their votes to win?

In addition to Kucinich and Nader, Ron Paul is a good example. He's really a Libertarian but because he wanted to win some elections, he ran as a Republican. Even so, he is too far from what a typical Republican voter wants to secure the Republican nomination for President. Democrats certainly dont want to vote for him. So if he ran on the Libertarian ticket and had all of the ballot access in the world and all the publicity in the world, from where does he get his votes?

For all the noise that the "we need more choices than the two major parties" crowd likes to make, the fact is that the two major parties represent enough of the right of center and left of center crowds viewpoints so that there is no room for anyone else. If that starts to change, the two parties will shift. The Democratic Party will always try to capture enough of the votes so that they can defeat the Republicans, or the left most 50% of the vote + 1. The Republicans are always going to try to do the same thing from the other side.

This is all very easy to understand. And what it means is, someone who might otherwise identify as Green ought to run for President as a Democrat. If they can convince the 50-75 million folks who will vote in the Democratic Primary to vote for them, then, in fact, they will have proven that there is a desire among the Democratic party electorate to have someone more progressive be their standard bearer. In fact, we had something like that several times when Dennis Kucinich ran for President, someone who I am sure the Greens would welcome into their party. He didn't win. He didnt come close.

That is a pretty clear message of what the Presidential chances are of someone to the left of the typical Democratic Party elected official.