Progressives' voter tactics...

If Progressives don't vote for "War criminals", then they are fools. All presidents have bloody hands. The real war criminal was George HW Bush, and Progressives preferred to sit on their hands rather than vote him out of office in 2004.

The American process is a one vote single round system. If you camapign for a third party, all you will do is hand over the presidency, and the House and Senate to the Republicans.

If you want to push the Dem's to a more progressive agenda, take a leaf from the Tea Party: develop an agenda and ramrod that agenda DURING THE PRIMARIES. That's where you'll you'll change the party's directions.

When Progressives took what they could get, they had Two Roosevelts (the anti Trust acts, the New Deal), Wilson (the Society of Nation, the blueprint for the UN), Truman and, yes, even Kennedy and Johnson (the New Frontier and the Great Society, not to mention that minor detail, Civil Rights). Even the best Republican in office, Eisenhower, maintained and augmented the New Deal (the interstate freeways). None of them were saints by any stretch of the imagination. But the force was powerful enough to put a man on the Moon and get a Nixon to set up the EPA (I don't know which is the more startling).

Since 1968, the Progressives have dropped out of the elctoral process and what have we got? The dismantaling of American manufacturing, and the transfer of all wealth to an ever increasing financial elite, which has sent not only the American economy, but the world economy into financial decline, not to say nose dive.

If you want the Messiah to return, go to Church, but don't call yourselves politically progressive or anything else. To be political is to realise that a bit of good helps a whole lot more than demands for perfection. and to achieve that little bit of good is to understands the levers at your disposal and take whatever you can get to get there, one step at a time.

So yes, I'll vote for the guy who did at least something to increase everyone's access health care, and even tried to put gas in the economy's engine (though not enough to get far) rather than for the guy who prides himself in selling his country and his soul to the highest bidder.