3rd Party Candidates.

I can only support this, since if people start voting for smaller parties, maybe the whole bipartisan gig will be less of a given in the future.

I agree, but it'll never happen. convincing everyone at Blizzpub won't change anything.  Convincing everyone in one entire state won't change anything.  If you succeed in convincing an adequate number of people, All you'll do is steal votes away from the reasonable guy that's more middle of the road anyway and hand the nomination to the extremist, who isn't competing for votes with the third party candidate because he's extremist. 

It's an ugly catch 22 but it's true.  I wish third party candidates would quit sticking their nose in and handing presidencies to people like Bush.

And how the senior bush lost?

See, my idea is that if we had more then 2 parties, we might actually vote for a candidate who reflects what we want, and we wouldn't have the "well, that candidate ruined it for x, so we got an extremist." At least not so much.

Anyway, I was asking because I'm tired of knowing that I voted for a shithead. I don't care anymore if my vote is a loser, it's the principle of the thing.

And yes, I know that convincing people here won't do anything, I want to know who is running, so I can make an informed decision (you know, leading by example).

Honestly I dont think that having valid 3rd party candidates will change that. If you want to vote for someone who has no chance of winning, then that's already up to you. But if you want your candidate to have a chance of winning, then by definition he has to appeal to a huge audience. That alone will force him to compromise his values.

I'm sorry to say it but I think that even in a true democracy, candidates have to play the game to win. A rational candidate garners as much support as he can from a limited pool of support. Assuming you start with multiple candidates all trying to win, it will always eventually boil down to two finalists. The votes wouldn't be divided exclusively between them, but you would end up with a first place and a second place.

When you have a society with high availability of information, it becomes easy to just ask people what they think, and rule out most candidates before it gets anywhere near a vote. Hence everyone except for the first and second place candidates get eliminated, and the only reason to have a vote is to choose between the two leaders.

Now, I'm not saying I'm happy with the way it is right now.. I don't trust the media or any of the candidates or the people who work for them at all. I just think that the two party system might be the natural extension of the democratic model.

If you're suggesting that we're all fucked no matter what, well, I don't disagree.

What I can do is hope that there are enough people who arn't shitheads working behind the spotlight which the president is in that keep him in check.