I’ve dipped in and out of TPM since the early '00s. I didn’t become a regular here until '07, and I wouldn’t be anyplace else now though I didn’t hang around much between the two elections.
Now I’m all into it again and I miss y’all when I don’t talk to you for awhile.
Thank You! I’m always pleased when I can draw analogies and lessons from the geek world for those living in other “Alternate Reality Planes”.
I also like to tell people that, as an IT management type, the most important class I ever took in college was actually “cultural anthropology”. It allowed me to understand folks I’d otherwise never fathom for a moment (I’m looking at you, Marketing team!) The Sales types were easy (we just describe them as “coin operated”), but those marketing guys, I mean - another tribe, amirit?? 
If you had a dog in a Network Operations Center he could tag all the cat videos to ride on a slow boat to nowhere. Once you have that concept, then apply it to business transactions, emergency communications, news, phone calls, Russian propaganda, credit card processing, I Love Lucy reruns. Who gets to choose what gets through the tubes? At this point, the Internet is critical infrastructure. Who would support a system where a dishonest gatekeeper could decide Budweiser trucks get to cross the bridge and ambulances do not? (Oh, Chris Christie already tried that. Did not go over well.) We need turnout in the 2018 elections to help create a Republican House caucus so small they will be able to meet in a broom closet.
Barry Commoner on the Citizens Party ticket in 1980 is more the model I am thinking about. I don’t dispute that Obama, in this area as in many others, is an outlier. Having gone door to door for most Democratic candidates since Carter, I got the sense as an environmentalist that he and Gore were the ones who were most serious about it. I don’t think the party as a whole prioritizes it enough.
I don’t know why you went down to the Senate level – I doubt Greens run in SC, but I’m not sure my argument even begins to work unless the third party can influence the major parties and bring independent ideas into the process and public consciousness. I’m not sure one could even begin to argue that for state races.
Too often when talking about challenges to the party or its frontrunner, the effect at the ballot box is the only thing that counts. But elections are much more complex. I realize Sanders did not go the third party route, but I think that he exemplifies the way in which a candidacy can affect the race prior to the final vote count. And one effect can indeed be to throw the race – I just don’t think that is the only one or that the causality is always clear.
It’s really too bad that Ralph Nader wasn’t run over by a semi in 1999. Many hundreds of thousands—if not over a million—of dead Iraqis and Syrians would be alive today, and thousands of American military wouldn’t be dead or physically or mentally maimed.
I listed those third parties that got more than 5%. You read that as “gets no more than 5%”. And pluckyinky and thunderclapnewman like this? Ye Gods.
Oh G_d, one can of worms at a time…
First, I said “gets no more than ~5%” which (a bit snarkily) implied some wiggle room. But regardless, I see no definition of “major” where parties who don’t get elected to national office and only ever act as spoilers can be called “major.” If they’re getting above 5%, then they could maybe argue that constitutes a “minor party,” but it would be an enormous stretch to suggest that they are in any way “major” unless they were legitimately within striking distance of winning a few elections. That’s a thoroughly silly argument.
Fine. Let’s not beat it into the ground. Hopefully we will have an impeachment soon, and third parties won’t matter for a generation.
This is totally OT but I think it is well worth passing on:
I know I’m glad.
First Degree. Excellent. No fucking around
Nope - the DA upped from second degree and he’s facing possible life and he ought to get it. He purposely ran over her.
Hey, I don’t mind if there’s still 100 of them left, provided we can squeeze them all into the broom closet at the same time… 
Shouldn’t this be “drown them in a bathtub”?
Yup. As I read more and more about the Russian playbook, I’m reassessing much of the past couple of years. How much was legitimate Bernie Bros and how much was a concentrated gaslighting scam? I’m a LOT less tolerant that I was of the far out there stuff, and even proposed a while ago that we all get at least our general region added to our profile.
It’s possible to track an Internet address block (aka an “IP address block”) to a specific world region, and others are clearly identified as sources for specific botnets and address hiding, so somebody misbehaving out there, who also comes from a known obfuscation address block, could be treated appropriately. You wouldn’t have to show the specific IP address (which, as I demonstrated with Ukkie when he was at his worst opens you to specific cyber attacks) but something to the affect of "From Verizon in Southern California" or "From a Known VPN Service in Canada" would let us know something about what we’re dealing with…
The Santa Fe City Council is in a little bit of an uproar in that they are finally being called to implement the instant runoff voting voters approved ten years ago. Kinda amazing the resistance. I think the powers that be at the various levels are all mostly ok with how it works now.
Apple falls how far from the tree? It rolled straight down the trunk apparently.
New Yorker toon of the day.
And this from our neighbor to the north: