>There are plenty of good arguments for why
>the Democrats are not always great; the question is whether a third party
>strategy is viable under the present electoral system where no third party
>has been able to get a serious toehold since the Republicans emrged during
>the apocolypse leading up to the Civil War.
Of course the US Democratic Party is partly responsible for that electoral system. They could have attempted to change it to a preferential system that would enable Green voters to give their second preference votes to the Democrat candidate. Presumably their rationale for not doing so is to blackmail all left wing voters into voting for them, or waste their vote.
If you are right that voters defecting from the Democrats to vote Green is what cost the Democrats the election, then it has proven to be a failed strategy. Not the fault of the Greens, who haven't achieved sufficient political influence to make such a change.
Their own fault. It is silly to blame the Green voters for refusing to cave in to the blackmail. Which is what you are doing.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas