"Evil" shouldn\'t have a place in political discourse. It isn\'t valid. "The Republicans are truly evil, no question." That carries no information, it doesn\'t tell me anything. Further it\'s unnecessary. We already know the extent and depth of the damage the GOP has wrought on this country.

You dont live in a swing state so unless you want to show symbolic support for a third party I dont see any harm in sitting this one out.

My 85 year old grandmother and I both live in secure states (she is in MS while I am in TX) and neither of us like any of the candidates. She said we should write in Peter Pan. I agreed.

And I share your views on Nader. His internal structuring and lack of quality links to grassroots organizations highlight just how much talk he can talk as opposed to walking it.

We have Coke (McCain), Pepsi (Obama bin Biden), Diet Dr. Pepper (Nader) and McKinney - don\'t even know what beverage to equate her to but I don\'t taste H2O, which I am confident is what we need.

I share your hesitancy about whom to support in this election. In fact, your analysis of the various candidates and platforms echoes my own. But I\'d like to use this analysis of the current indeterminacy in electoral politics to envision what kind of political formation would actually address my real hopes.

First, I would like to see a vision that draws together the various threads into which current progressive activism is split.  Some of these threads are the anti-war movement, anti-racist activism, the immigrant movement, the response to global warming and the current economic crisis in which we are sinking deeper and deeper.  Currently, these elements are treated as separate issues, each with its own interest groups competing for limited resources, but can we not see them as aspects of a central crisis? 

For instance, the anti-war movement, in which I have been involved from the beginning of the Iraq Occupation, tends to focus narrowly on withdrawing our troops from Iraq and related issues, such as caring for veterans and reparations for the Iraqi people, all of which I strongly support.  What it lacks is a comprehensive social and political analysis of why we invaded and occupied that country in the first place.  This is what I have tried to provide at http://nonviolentjesus.blogspot.com from a Christian perspective.  The political formation that would command my unswerving loyalty would address the following elements: 1) The economic motivation for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.  This analysis must go beyond simplistic slogans to include an awareness of the larger strategy of global capitalism to control the world\'s remaining energy supplies.  2) The relationship between global warming and the inherent drive of capitalism toward unceasing economic expansion as well as the inherent injustice of concentrated ownership of the world\'s resources; 3) How to overrule the right to private property when it conflicts with the demands of justice; 4) The fundamental reordering of the economic system so that it supports the values of solidarity and cooperation rather than reinforcing selfishness and competition; 5) An end of the private ownership of the means of production and full economic democracy in which all productive enterprises will be owned and operated by those who make them work - the workers; 6) An end to the profit system until all people on earth have enough to eat, adequate housing, free health care, and free education.

That should do for starters.  How strange it is that with all our education and the motivation of a rapidly developing ecological crisis that we cannot envision anything more politically imaginative than the rather pathetic lineup we currently have.  This is not a blanket condemnation.  I admire Barack Obama in many ways, but I feel he lacks the moral leadership of a Dr. King.  I admire Ralph Nader, but agree with your criticism of him.  I admire Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente, but feel that they lack a comprehensive vision of where we need to go politically, as right as they may be on individual issues.