No, I would advocate running folks in the primary. The existence of primaries seems to be something Green and other third party folks willfully forget exist in these debates.
But in the general election, a number of even these six would be worth supporting since they support progressive causes more often the reactionaries. Why elect worse?
And the gain from electing even one more Dem, even a reactionary one who would still vote for Dashle as majority leader and hand control of the rules committee to the Dems is that the vote on the ergonomic standards might never have been scheduled for a vote. If 44 Dems are good on the issue and the seven other conservative Dems "block" with the progressives, that is a gain by controlling the agenda.
Of course, the real goal is to elect a full 51+ Dems who would support the ergo standards.
But the Greens don't even seem to care about that; running their symbolic campaigns are more important than real peoples lives and health. The differences between being crippled without economic support and getting decent ergo standards is a "minor" difference between most Dems and the GOP, so why compromise?
But the third party rule-or-ruin folks will keep spinning that Dems are all just variations of sold-out business politicians. Hey, which of the business class lobbied for ergo standards? Sure weren't prominent in the repeal debate, but the unions and health folks sure were, and the 44 Dems listened to the working class advocates, not UPS and the other business class reps.
-- Nathan Newman