This coming week is a big primary in California. This week I highlight some of the progressives running in that primary and I hope my California readers will consider helping them out. Focusing on these kinds of local elections is so critical, yet so neglected. In California this week we have the chance to elect the next generation of progressive politicians.

This last week was the week when John McCain's campaign took a serious blow. Bob Barr, a Republican who is about as conservative as they get but who got fed up with Bush's war and invasion of civil liberties, has been nominated as the Libertarian Candidate for President. This potentially will hurt McCain big time...but we shall see.

In an earlier post, I wondered whether John McCain might shift his stance on same-sex marriage to attract support from social conservatives.

I would like to discuss another possibility: does the California ruling create an opening for a socially conservative third-party presidential candidate?

In 2003, Roy Moore, then chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, gained national attention for his refusal to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama courthouse. Because of his actions, Moore was removed from office and, according to the Associated Press, "became a hero to the Christian right."

This general election more than most will test the courage of voters to avoid lesser-evil strategic voting that has propped up our two-party plutocracy.  People with intelligence and conscience must resist peer pressure and the temptation to vote against John McCain by voting for Barack Obama.

Of course, a McCain presidency that pursues much of the same policies and values of the totally inept and morally bankrupt Bush administration is something to loathe.  But lesser-evil voting sustains our corrupt political system.

Many say they are voting for Barack Obama in a most enthusiastic and positive way.  For me, this does not work.  I see no compelling evidence in Obama's history that he has what it takes to be a true, solid reformer.  All I see is a young, inexperienced terrific talker that has used slick rhetoric to sell himself.  With intellectual and ideological elitism and an aura of superiority and academic smugness, he has successfully fooled millions of people who are so disillusioned with our corrupt political system that they have let themselves be manipulated by poetic promises of change.  In reality, he is just another super-ambitious, lying mainstream politician that has taken considerable money and support from all sorts of corporate and other special interests.

In 2000 Nader made a collossal mistake that cost Gore the election. Part of that mistake was what seemed an inexplicable statement that Gore and Bush were equivalent. I knew this was bullshit just like I knew it was bullshit when Gore, Cheney and Powell claimed Hussein was tied with al-Qaeda. And events since then have proven Nader was as "mistaken" as Bush, Cheney and Powell. The question always was: was Nader mistaken or lying? Either way, Nader only won 3% of the vote in 2000, not enough to do him any good, but enough, in key swing states, to help deliver the election to Bush.

I don't know about 2000, but by 2004 Nader was abandoning all pretense of values. Nader abandoned the Green Party, yet expected them to follow him blindly. They chose not to. In 2004 a large chunk of Nader's money and support came from Republicans. Among those Republican who went out on a limb for the self proclaimed messiah of the left was none other than John McCain, whose legal team did their best to get Nader on the ballot in Florida. As the Greens went their own way, Nader turned to Republicans, John McCain in particular, to save his campaign. The result? Nader got .3% of the vote...one tenth of what he got in 2000.

Now in 2008 Nader is running yet again. And John McCain seems to be behind his run, quite literally. Nader's website attacks Barack Obama. His website attacks Hillary Clinton. His website DOES NOT talk about John McCain, his former (and current?) patron.

The year is such a big one for politics. I am amazed how many people are extra involved. One friend describes it as "Democrat fever," and is finding that people are eagerly digging deeper than usual to win. And there are already payoffs.

One of the most important things to happen this last week was Kofi Annan has finally gotten the battling factions in Kenya to sign a peace agreement. I was watching a segment on Current TV about the situation in Kenya and it was really worrisome. Some thought it could turn into another Rwanda, though others felt Kenya would pull itself together before it sank that low. But the truth is, one of Africa's more stable nations nearly collapsed into a bloody civil war. Kofi Annan has for now eased the crisis and could deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. The chaos in Kenya had a personal connection for me because some of my loans through Kiva were in the areas of Kenya where the fighting was taking place. As I write here, the situation there was really bad and many of the businesses I loaned to in Kenya may no longer exist.

Lots more below the fold!

and help Americans, Ralph Nader is running for president again.  He deserves the support of all Americans that see themselves as progressives, dissidents, independents, and patriots who want to remove the stranglehold of the two-party plutocracy on our political system.

Because he wants to salvage American democracy When it comes to being an honest, proven and trustworthy change agent, Nader is the gold standard.  So why are so many Democrats going ballistic and spewing hate towards Nader?

They are in denial about both Obama and Clinton.  Both owe much to the corporate and business world that Nader has waged war against for decades.  Like Clinton, Obama has taken huge amounts of money from several business sectors.  Both refuse to advocate a single payer universal health care system that Nader champions; this protects the enormously profitable health insurance industry.

Since Russ Feingold will not be running for President, I will now be endorsing Al Gore for President for 2008. I am asking anybody who supported Russ Feingold for President to support Al Gore for President so we can restore the rule of law to the White House and restore the system of checks and balances to our Constitutional system.

Like many of us, I was not enthused by Al Gore in 2000. I voted for Nader as a way of pushing the Democratic party to the left and thus creating a Green Revolution. I thought that Bush would not be that bad of a President anyway, as he would be bipartisan and supposedly be above the fray. In the meantime, we could move the party and the country to the left and everybody would be happy.

A fascinating recent development seems to have slipped through the cracks.

Ralph Nader, Al Gore's third party opponent in the 2000 presidential race, attended a book signing event by the latter of the companion book to An Inconvenient Truth, and the two men received each other well and perhaps reached a new rapport.

Crossposted from Daily Kos

This could be bad news.  Catastrophically bad news.  Former NARAL chair Kate Michelman says she may run for Pennsylvania Senate as a third party independent candidate:

How angry was Michelman?

The veteran activist, who has lived for almost three decades in Pennsylvania, might just jump into the Senate race herself.

"After Casey announced his support for Alito, I got calls from around the country," says Michelman in a Legal Times article on the fallout from the Alito fight. She tells Legal Times that she has been urged by Democratic donors and feminist groups to run this fall as a pro-choice independent challenger to anti-choice Republican Santorum and anti-choice Democrat Casey.

If Michaelman runs, she'll do nothing but split the Democratic vote and assure a Santorum victory.  If she was really serious about furthering the pro-choice agenda, she would have gotten in gear months ago and run against Casey in the Democratic primary.  Doing the third party spoiler thing now, by contrast, will return Santorum to the Senate, and therefore assure a continued Republican Senate majority.  Such an outcome will not only set the pro-choice movement back, but also hurt progressive causes on civil liberties, labor, the environment, health care, and pretty much every other progressive cause you can think of (goodbye NSA wiretap hearings, hello retroactive authorization of unsupervised NSA domestic spying, for example).  

Let's hope Michaelman pulls back on this foul trial balloon.  No one is asking her to campaign for Casey.  We're just asking her to do no harm.