I'm 100% with you on this one, Miss Natalie. As a member of the Libertarian Party, I get the same thing from the other side.

Indeed just this afternoon, probably as you were writing this, a rah-rah Republican I hadn't seen in a couple of years, went straight to explaining that I was voting for Kerry if I didn't support Bush.

No, not Kerry. My candidate's name is Badnarik. B-A-D-N-A-R-I-K. He's not from Massachusetts, he's not Catholic, doesn't look anything like the senator.

If Kerry wants your vote or Bush wants mine, then they need to give us better reasons than simply not being the other guy.

If Kerry wants your vote or Bush wants mine, then they need to give us better reasons than simply not being the other guy.

The mentality behind what they are doing comes from working with statistics, polls, etc. all the time. Most Dems and Repubs realize that a person who gets around 2% of the votes is a statistical long shot for the presidency. So then they analyze what will happen to those votes when cast, and that is how they arrive at their conclusion.

They shouldn't have pressured him. I don't see anything wrong with discussing the statistics and asking for his help in removing the President from office, but not pressure and not verbal abuse. How can any group pressure a man beholden to no group?

I can understand their frustration because a large percentage of frustrated Democrats turn to him, so it does cost the party votes. But the solution isn't to remove another viable option. The solution is to remove the frustration.

It's not the same comparison. Libertarians have never been a factor in national elections -- Badnarik (whoever the hell he is) won't even get half a percentage point nationally and will pull virtually no votes from Bush. The only conservatives who would defect from Bush in favor of a Libertarian are the few wackjob ideologues that hit the weekly Dungeons and Dragons game -- polls show 90% of Republicans will vote for Bush, and Kerry's the one fighting for the defectors who are alienated by Bush's spending and the economy.

Nader has shown he's a legitimate factor after 2000 and is polling around 6% right now. I voted for Nader in 2000 -- keep in mind I was in a solidly blue state -- because I wanted him to get the 5% nationally that would give the Green Party federal matching funds. I thought that would be important to establish credible Green Party candidates all over the country. It turns out Nader didn't get all that close to that threshold and that Nader's voters, while reinvigorating progressive activist movements, might have cost Gore in a few states.

The Libertarians will never, ever, ever get anywhere near 5% in a national election nor will they ever decide a national election. We forget that Perot's Reform Party run was the most significant third-party impact upon American electoral politics in history and that he won Clinton the election in 1992. There's no disputing those numbers since he garnered the most third party votes in history and exploited the mushiness of the right that year. Libertarians have not shown an ability to articulate a compelling message the way Perot or even Nader did. The Libertarian Party does not attract impressive candidates (I'll save a snarky comment about the Indiana race) nor does it have any particularly interesting ideas that aren't childish minutae about closing a particular government agency no one cares about. The only issues Libertarians could ever gain traction about would be taxes and guns, but the GOP has outflanked everyone on those issues for years.

I respect Nader, I'm proud of my vote for him in 2000, and I admire his work in consumer advocacy and in presenting a vibrant critique of corporate excesses. He's one of the most intelligent public figures we've been lucky to hear from in recent political history. I think his speeches and energy in 2000 have energized a whole generation of young college students toward progressive politics and made someone like Howard Dean possible that reminded Kerry and the rest of the Democratic establishment about the core principles of progressive politics. Nader and Dean put the fight back into the left, and America owes them a great debt of gratitude for that because we would have been sitting ducks in this election otherwise. But I won't be voting for him this year -- I think it was necessary for him to run in 2000 to get his critique heard and it was, by many. I don't think now is the time for another protest vote -- the country is too polarized and there's a veritable culture war being waged by the Right. All liberals or left-of-center moderates need to help with that struggle even as we commit ourselves to establishing viable third-party alternatives to the dismal two-party offerings we've been afforded. The reality is that if we lose this election, it will extinguish any spark of progressive politics on a national scale for quite possibly a long time. It will shift the entire two-party system even further to the right -- if that's possible -- and will make future Democratic candidates more unpalatable to true progressives.

I haven't read any news on this lately, but is Nader still struggling to get on the ballot in several states?

That is all.

Check out the links in the piece -- see what some heinous humans are doing in Arizona.

By the way, my previous Nader votes (1996, 2000) were not protest votes. This year's model will not be a protest either. I will be voting for the candidate I deem best (or even acceptable -- Kerry is not).

It is true that Libertarians have failed to affect national elections to date, and it is true that most state LP affilliates are ideologues going nowhere. It is quite likely that Badnarik will not affect this year's presidential race. However, there are a few state LPs who get it when it comes to appealing to voters, such as Indiana and Oregon, and there the LP candidates are affecting outcomes.

In Indiana, home of Al Barger, the LP is routinely the margin of victory in three-way races. Al's totals will probably be short of the margin because the incumbent, Evan Bayh, is so popular. However, in close, contentious races, the LPIN is not only a factor, but is becoming the kingmaker. Gubernatorial candidate Kenn Gividen will likely gain 4-6%, while the margin of difference between incumbent Democrat Joe Kernan and Bush Admin refugee Mitch Daniels will likely be 0.5-2%. As stated above, 90% of Republicans, and accordingly then 90% of Democrats will vote their party, so what about the other 10% each and all of the independents, who together make up about 40% of Indiana voters? The candidates cannot ignore these, and will increasingly abandon their bases and plunge for the remaining votes. The LP candidate is one place to try to take them from, especially if he is polling strong in an issue one party can more naturally reclaim.

Unfortunately for the Nader fans, the effort to gain the ballot in Indiana looks like it will fail. Dallas Stoner (I did not make up that name! Can you imagine a libertarian activist with a name like that?) heads the Nader ballot access drive and reports that he has only 9,000 of the required 30,000 signatures with one week left to file.

The Indiana folks supporting Ralph Nader learned something about gaining ballot access that Libertarians have known all along- it's tedious, time-consuming, unsexy work. The AP report in the Indy Star: http://www.indystar.com/articles/1/157442-3421-127.html

Greens and others on the far left often think of Libertarians as nut cases, but they have to respect our ability to retain ballot access here. The LP has been on the ballot statewide in Indiana since 1994 because all of the requirements were met: the proper number of signatures were collected in that year, and then the proper percentage of votes were earned in each subsequent Secretary of State race. Naderites wouldn't be facing the petition at all if they had run a candidate for Secretary of State in 2002 and gotten their numbers.

There's the rub. The Libertarian Party is a real political party, with county affiliates across the state. The Green Party is not a real political party, but a candidate vehicle much like the Reform Party. The hard fact is that election laws are essentially hurdles that Republicans and Democrats together erect to make it difficult for fledgling parties to enter the game. A serious party, as the LP has demonstrated, can enter the field through hard work and a focus on topping those hurdles set up in election law.

So, let's have that snarky comment about Indiana.

Being on the ballot doesn't win you any elections. I'm not a huge fan of the organizational priorities of the Green or Reform parties, but they have proven that they can field compelling candidates that DO affect national elections. I cannot vouch for their efforts in Indiana, so I will defer to your criticism of their choices. I would guarantee that the Libertarian Party would take high-profile candidates if it attracted them, because ideological fervor and manic organization mean crumbs when you don't have a legitimate candidate to sell. I recall a certain New York gubernatorial race in the 1990s where the LP gleefully turned over the race to a celebrity who treated it as mostly a joke (the only time an LP candidate will ever poll over 20% in any race).

What is the LP's goal? To influence policy of elected state officials and their campaigns in Indiana?
No offense, but Al Barger is not a compelling candidate. I'm sure he's an interesting fellow and he's a striking figure in a chapeau, but Libertarians will always have an image problem when competing with established politicians. More than that, I think Libertarians have a message problem. Libertarians seem to enjoy taking contrarian positions, which I appreciate, but only on matters that the political middle doesn't care about. If you're serious about getting pro-business votes, tone down the rhetoric about drug legalization and scrapping the Department of Education and find a successful millionaire businessman to field in a state-wide race. You're not a king-maker in a race that you're running in -- a king-maker in politics is someone that can consciously swing influence and support to one party or another, not flail wildly for attention in unelectable candidacies like a gnat buzzing around the hides of elephants battling for turf.

If you do pull 4-6% (I don't have any empirical proof of what you've pulled in past elections, so I'll take your word for it) for your gubernatorial candidate, you are of course subject to your conservative critics who will say you will cost the GOP the election. I don't think Libertarians have proven any ability to get swing voters, undecideds, or independents nationally or in states I'm aware of. That's particularly true for soft Democrats or progressives -- I'd guarantee that you get very few of them to vote for your platform, even with the weakness of the Indiana Green Party. Indiana does not seem like the most fruitful place for Green Party politics and ecological progressivism.

For what it's worth, I give you credit for your organizational skills in Indiana. If it's true that your past candidates for state-wide races have pulled as much as 6%, then you are clearly one of the more organized Libertarian Party groups in the country. That's my point, though -- if you're serious about making your loony message more accepted, focus on local and state elections. I'm sure you already realize this, but investing your scarce resources in a Congressional race is a waste of time and money. The more local you are, the more you get noticed and the more elections you can win. The higher you aim, the more you will be continually irrelevant, ignored or mocked.

By the way, the committed number for Democrats nationally is more like 80%, but national politics have become so polarized that 85% of people have already made up their minds. It's been well documented, but the November presidential election will be essentially a contest for 5% of the electorate and focused on narrow demographics within less than 20 states.

I think Ralph Nader is a wonderful gadfly and a very bright man. I do not think he has the personality or makeup necessary to be President. I may agree with his platform more than that of Kerry's, but my vote in 2000 was functional in order to be able to field governable 3rd party candidates in the future. I don't think Nader could ever conduct diplomacy or negotiate a Congress -- he's made a career out of martyrdom and asceticism, a refusal to compromise his principles. People have written interesting analyses of his choices of language and monastic lifestyle. I think he's valuable as a reminder of our political conscience; I don't think he could govern. But at least he has good (if often impractical) ideas and is a respectable ideologue. I don't think the Libertarian Party has proven that it can even attain Nader's effectiveness as a national scold; your ideas either lack currency or have already been co-opted (with more passion and toughness) by Goldwater Republican politics.

That is all.

With the exception of painting us as loony, we’re very much in agreement. States other than Indiana and Oregon do focus on fringe issues. Here in Indiana, we actively coach our candidates to court small business owners as a constituency, and against campaigning on issues the offices they are running for cannot affect. This means that legalization, for instance, issues are completely out if you are running for City Council or County Commissioner. We coach our candidates to look at local policies and show how they negatively impact small business owners, and then appeal directly to these voters. This approach, along with strong organization building, has brought us the results we get. Other state LPs get the results they get as true cause-and-effect.

In Hamilton County, where I am Chair of the LP, we had the following numbers in 2003:

Rob Place, candidate for Noblesville City Council, 43%
Mark Schreiber, candidate for Noblesville City Council, 40%
Dean Barkley, candidate for mayor, City of Carmel, 27%

In 2004, we are running for five local offices because we have five candidates who are qualified and are respected members of the community. We anticipate numbers in the same range as 2003 for these races, with a County Council victory a distinct possibility.

Statewide, though, we do have kingmaker ability, as both Republicans and Democrats have begged us not to run in certain races, to run in others, and to throw our support behind their candidates in other races still. Even though they do also describe us as irrelevant when asked, their actions tell me otherwise.

You are again correct that the conservative critics will be all over us if it is perceived that we are draining the GOP of votes. We are agreeing with every critic who points this out, and reminding them that the GOP can reclaim any votes it thinks it has lost to us any time it wants by returning to fiscal restraint. We like it when critics point this out. It gives us an opportunity to reinforce our message, and re-affirm our relevance. If we were irrelevant, they couldn’t possibly gripe about us, right?