Bobert, here is the thing for me. Both these candidates are so bad, neither of them can even pull independents and persuadeables of either party (ie the mushy middle voters that swing back and forth between voting Dem or Rep) to rally a majority of the vote and handily win the electoral college (mustn't forget about them who actually appoints the winner, because in this great electoral sham of a system, it is the electoral college, not the popular vote, that determines the winner). I mean, there is only two of them, and we are looking at this bizarre circumstance where with only two men seriously in the running, NEITHER OF THEM CAN GET A MAJORITY!

How pathetic is that? This deadlock thing demonstrates that once again, the Republican strategy of keeping the voters at home is working very well, thank you very much, and that the sorry excuse for a Dem strategy can't even get out their traditional base, because the party kingmakers keep picking lousy candidates for king.

Now, if a guy who may end up pulling a whopping 1% of the vote out of 100% is that dangerous and threatening to one party, I think it's time for that party to start serving the best interests of their nation rather than their pocketbooks, and head on back to the drawing board with their tails between their legs.

If Nader is this much of a threat with a measly 1% of the vote, just what does that say about Kerry and Bush?

It ain't much to recommend them, now is it? If Kerry is this bad a candidate, just how good a president do you suppose he would be?

Now, if B/C had declared martial law, and started shooting people in the streets of the US, it would be one thing.

But that isn't what is happening here, and everyone knows it. So the inevitable Democratic 11th hour hysteria of "oh my god, what if Bush wins" is going to really get intense from now until the election. The Dems, and especially those Anybody But Bush Dems, will out fear-monger the B/C war on terror/Kerry is a LIBERAL fear mongering of the Republicans as if 9/11 were a kids birthday party.

So here is the thing: can people decide NOT to vote for Kerry out of fear of four more years? Because that is the phase of the campaign we are in now. A lot of Dem fear mongering and Anybody But Bush handwringing and hysteria.

But you know what? It's just like we've been saying all along. Nothing changes on election day under this system. The status quo is rock solid. We will wake up to bombings in Iraq by the US and it's self-perpetuating insurgencies. GATT and NAFTA and WTO will be safe from the likes of the citizens of the world. The environment will continue to be trashed, species will become extinct due to our folly and greed, human rights will continue to be trampled, the Social Security lockbox will be thoroughly plundered along with peoples' private pensions by corporate "privatization", the military will not start taking care of it's Iraq veterans or any of it's veterans, the Enrons will remain in charge and no one will talk about their plundering of the US economy, the price of oil will skyrocket, wages will continue to go down, millions more will be priced out of the insurance market and millions will die or become disabled as a result of it, homelessness will become even more prevalent, we won't become respected in the eyes of the world, or even in the European capitals....

...regardless of who is elected president.

Nothing changes on US presidential election days, because we need a new electoral system. Not a new president, a new electoral system.