Day One or Game Over

Vote Blue If We're Ever To Do The Work To Create A Real Third (Progressive) Party

My Comment on Gail Collins “Considering a Third-Party Candidate? Get a Life” piece:

For decades I've believed that our republic---in terms of a successful, humane and prosperous for most social experiment--would be circling the proverbial drain until real campaign finance reform was legislated and enacted.

Along the way, we've now gathered additional prohibitive aspects--along with those we've failed to address, reform and dispense with: the electoral college system of outcome determination, gerrymandering, the empty obstructionist congressional filibuster.

And Citizens United all but sealed the deal in terms of not only corporate influence, but with what society as a whole is willing to abide.

All are terrible metrics for a truly vulnerable and psychologically mislead electorate, much of which knows next to nothing of the true workings of government and social policy, domestic and especially foreign.

Recent and not so recent history bears out the undeniable fact that third party candidates in a two-party election— write-in or otherwise— effect nothing but to skew the accurate sway of the numbers (usually toward the Right’s candidate), and enabling that voter of conscience to “sleep at night”, whatever that may achieve for the community at large.

The daily task of a true Patriot: to discern, interpret and digest still available granular knowledge in the form of history, policy, the mechanics of Democratic legislature, then incorporate them into ongoing discussion, activism and engagement. For every day of each term of all elected public offices. Not merely every four years. And not merely by watching or listening to main stream media. We must follow on and dive deeper.

I believe independent media is the future of an informed and civically engaged electorate. But the written work of historians, activists and specialists in all fields is the most encompassing and informative resource—for facts as well as a higher resolution skepticism for what is and aren’t such.

Too many have thrown up their hands in disgust, futility or the interest of merely maintaining ones’ own mental health.

There are nascent encouraging bright spots—one is Jamie Raskin's Ranked Choice voting proposal for all congressional elections. That's attainable, and it's a great start toward these other reformative ends if not a necessary intermediate stop on the journey toward more comprehensive electoral reform.

I hope we can indeed start building a presentably formidable third party (I say Progressive…a larger rubric that includes more than the, yes, most important climate and environmental issues in overly exigent need of addressing) beginning on January 6, 2025.

If MAGA Republicans get in, well…all bets are off for a very long time. Let’s get with it.