Here's why advocating third party votes for president annoys me.
No substantial progress ever came from the leaders. None of it. They always have to be dragged by the will of the people.
Real change is every day. It's issues. It's local and it's about bills and contacting legislators and spreading the word about those bills and issues. It's most definitely not about helping to elect a president who will make the job of bringing about significant change even HARDER.
Furthermore, you don't start building at the top, you lay the foundation first. The right didn't get where they are in 8 years, it took decades. Electing someone like Kucinich would be awesome, but they'd still have to work with congress to get anything done, and we see how much luck Kucinich has had on that front already.
The fact that candidates who we agree with have zero luck getting elected says to me that we have a whole hell of a lot of groundwork to do before we can expect to have an administration that is to any measurable degree left of center. Until we change the minds of the people casting the votes, we can rail forever against whatever candidates let us down, but it wont' change a thing. To bring about change we should be railing against counterproductive and harmful ideas, and advocating ones that help.
They have more money, but we have more people. It would be helpful IMO (and also less divisive) if we could stop focusing on candidates, and start engaging in the hard work the right wing engaged in for decades (and is still busy engaging in) in order to push their agenda forward. (This of course is not the case in primary elections, during which focusing on a candidate is of course the only reasonable course of action.)
= new reply since forum marked as read
It takes hard work at the local level. It will not be easy or quick. But it will be imperative to get working in our own neighborhoods/towns/cities.
Corporatists aren't being told to be patient... 
"And even with that, they took decades to get this far"
I don't think centrists understand--it's not the pace of the journey that we are unhappy about--it's the DESTINATION we have a problem with!
sacrifice for the sake of keeping the "extremists" out of power?
Your first answer was the honest one; your second makes little sense. 
people.
simply another term for corporate rule.
" authentic centrism tries to discover in the relationships between all factors and, being authentic, where it finds imbalances in power, as in our status quo, it acts to appropriately strengthen the disadvantaged factors for the purpose of establishing relationships that, in and of themselves, mitigate imbalances, without losing functionally valued qualities in ANY of the elements, left or right and everything betwixt. "
The problem with this is it is a Utopian philosophy, without any actual supporting evidence in the system under which we live.
"Real centrism is much harder than being more exclusive/simplified/authoritarian/vertical, but it has the advantage of the necessity of always being grounded in the most fundamental experiences of ALL of the actual people, not just media horseshit constructs, or just quantitative polling, or religious abstractions, or money, or any of the bullshit that substitutes for living facts these days."
Similar to REAL Communism, in that respect.
for millenia.
The mental programming that manifests as false dichotomies is breaking, not that there are no dichotomies, just that people are going to remember that IF there are those elements can be identified amongst themselves on a case by base basis.
People dealing with their own actual lives rather than with what they are TOLD are their lives = Communism? 
to say the least.
"People dealing with their own actual lives rather than with what they are TOLD are their lives = Communism?"
You latched on to the wrong word--it's the UTOPIANISM of your position am I comparing to theoretical Communism, not your political philosophy. I was simultaneously making reference to the frequent claim that "REAL communism not being tried yet."
Recommended.
and understand, just like corporate America lobbies our civil servants in the U.S. government, so also must we do the same. Writing, e-mailing, calling, joining forces with progressive groups that are really interested in getting things done, is crucial to push this country forward and away from fascism.
Although corporate America have more money than the unwashed masses, we have the MASSES to make our voices heard because in the end, we are still the ones who cast votes - something corporations can't. And although they can make some of the votes disappear, when we come out en masse, there's no stealing the election done. How do I know this? Well, Barack Hussein Obama is president today. That's how.
Thank you for this enlightening piece, redqueen.
I was just getting super tired of all the cheering for third party voters, cause like I said, IMO that just makes the job of pushing our agenda forward that much harder.
and I'm pretty sure the majority's opinion as well even if they're loathed to admit it.
Oh, and redqueen? YOU ROCK!!
Back atcha.
Centrist movements won't go anywhere .
The rightward movement of the right-wing was natural. A centrist movement that moves to the left is unnatural because the left in the United States doesn't exist.
You're advocating going in circle back to where you're right now (Howard Dean fans) it makes no sense.
Sid
an observation. I am curious if this little entrapment game is just silly Sid fun, or if you actually presume to accomplish something with it... 