Reply #114: For quite some time [View All]

[Silent3]

While there may be a lot of popular discontent with the status quo, there's not a lot of left-flavored popular discontent with the status quo, and there's more teabagger popular discontent at present. Simply voting for further-left third parties, or more progressive Democrats who don't win primaries, doesn't automatically have any partial or cumulative effect that makes current politics more progressive or future voting more progressive.

Big shifts happen in waves. It's sad that it often takes a lot of pain and going way too far in the wrong direction for one of those waves to build up, but that's the way things seem to work. Until there's a wave to catch, most "voting your conscience" is either at best pissing in the wind, or worse, it gives the advantage to the worse of two evils.