It seems the only ones standing up for us are 3rd party candidates

I'm ready to switch, the effort and money I put into helping dems. only to have them seem to be more concerned about their own fture than ours .

it would be nice to see more dems have the b*lls that olberman has

The guy who knows he's not going to win is more free to speak his mind. If a 3rd party were more mainstream you'd have the same complaints about it that you would of the Democratic party. Here in Minnesota I'm already starting to see that: our last gubenatorial race had Jessie's sucessor Tim Penny the Independant vs. Rodger Moe the Dem and Tim Pawlenty the Republican. Pawlenty won with 44% of the vote, Penny about 20% and Moe the rest (if memory serves).

The difference was most clearly made between Pawlenty and Moe/Penny, but as you can see the non-Republican vote was pretty split. Penny's campaign wasn't much different from Moe's, so there wasn't any reason to vote for one over the other for many Minnesota liberals. You think Nader's 1% of the vote is bad for stealing otherwise Democratic votes, imagine the future of Minnesota if we keep having 20% of otherwise Democratic votes going to a 3rd party!

If there's anything wrong with the currennt lot of 3rd parties is they're all *too* similar to the Democratic party, so the votes get split down the middle, making it very easy for that big, united Republican party to get the most votes and win without even needing a majority.

Seems a catch22, really: in order for a 3rd party to get elected it needs to become more mainstream, but that means stealing votes from one party or another depending on *which* mainstream they go for. The effect of which unless the 3rd party has a major celebrity running like Jessie, The Governor, Ventura, they only manage to upset the balance of power needlessly. That is, for now. Maybe over time we could have a 3rd party bring *more* balance to power rather than further destablizing it. Until that time, I feel I have no choice but to continue supporting Democrats.

unreasonable to the majority of the public. The publicity can only help them. Kerry would look like a "sore loser" if he contests the election. However, Kerry is following up to see if there are any voting irregularities.

Realistically, there is no way that Kerry can win the election.