Really? Well, I'll be! So could you be so kind as to pass on tomorrow's lottery numbers? The results of the next Super Bowl would be grand. And you can throw in a stock tip or two while you're at it.
You continue to miss the point; the whole target, for that matter. Yes; if you were to give me even money, I would bet that a major party candidate would win. I'm not questioning that.
What you're missing repeatedly, is that it is this way because you make it so. Election results are not handed down from the heavens, nor or they dice rolls. The realities of what makes them true are so because of the people that participate. People like you.
The point of this is not to make some prediction about what is going to happen. Unlike you, I don't claim that power. The point is to remind you that history is not something that exists outside of our actions like some movie that we passively watch. We make history. The point isn't too predict; it's to decide what our actions will be today. Not the 1830's, not during Teddy Roosevelt's time, not during the Reagan era. Today.
And today, I see not a single reason to enable this one-arty-two-headed disease of a state any longer.
Let me point out something that you might have forgotten: every revolutionary force in history was so because they broke with historical trends, not followed it. See my image above for Exhibit A in this category. If you want to keep telling yourself that you can't do this, be my guest. Bragging that you're doing what history has ordered you to do only engraves your name deeper on those chains around your wrists. And I'm not telling you that you need to take them off. Feel free to keep them. Just please don't suggest that because you don't want to do what is necessary to take them off that it must simply be impossible.
Wrong.
It's not the "realities of . . . the people that participate in elections" that makes it clear that, in 2008, either the Republican or Rat nominee WILL become President of the United States.
It is the reality of our system of government, the three salient points of which I set out in my last post and which you ignored, to wit:
(1) the winner-take-all system at the national level,
(2) the fact that candidates must win a majority of Electoral College votes to win the election,
(3) and the fact that, if no candidate receives a majority of the vote, the Constitution requires the House of Representatives to decide the Election (and no third party—even Teddy Roosevelt’s-—has fielded more than a handful of candidates for Congress).
I have NEVER suggested, nor would I, that it is impossible to change our system of government.
I suggest that it is my studied conclusion that it would be quite STUPID to change our system of government, *in regard to the three particulars set out above,* no matter how easy or hard it is.
The ONLY way a third party candidate can win is for one or more of the above particulars to be radically eliminated.
I am not for that. I feel the wisdom of our founders is elegantly obvious in the way those three prongs work together to prevent the death spiral of extra-major-party factionalism.
If you are talking about overthrowing our system of government, so that those three prongs no longer work together to keep factionalism something that is (1) sorted out primarily WITHIN parties and (2) WITHOUT it being given unchecked and unbalanced capacity to throw a presidential election into chaos, you'd better get cracking if you want to have more than two viable choices on Election Day.
In the meantime, I support our system of electing our president as one that allows for protest (both in the primaries and in the general election), but which limits the possibility for chaos in the transition of power in our highest office.
And since no revolution is going to occur between now and Election Day---nor would your or my refusal to vote or refusal to vote for the Republican or Rat nominee facilitate revolution (even if I so desired)---I intend to do what I view as my duty to secure the best choice, of the viable choices, for my country.
That's why I am voting for McCain.