Baldwin’s speeches fired up conservatives around the country and delivered a strong message about the true meaning of liberty.

HA!

I think that we will only see improvement in the strength of the third party, libertarian, and progressive movements if these candidates continue to aggressively get their messages out beyond the election seasons.

We absolutely would have had the same phenomena this year, if Bloomberg had run. But as the pundits say, these independent runs are like bees, they only sting once.

What we see among 3rd parties, and even recent Nader runs…are groups that are not getting the benefit of much in the way of ‘protest’ votes (we need to recognize this fiction about protest votes for what it is)…

What we are seeing is the actual, core support for these groups, and their relative sizes.

I agree, 3rd parties did well. Not as some kind of all 3rd parties are rising as one…I still believe that is more coincidence. Nader, Baldwin, Barr, McKinney, all did better, because they all really did better, i.e. the run was more organized than in 2004.

True Baldwin and Barr had countervailing pressures, like Baldwin completely losing California to the split with AIP, Barr getting attacked from within by so-called ‘purists’.

But, nevertheless…all of these 4 people really did a better job than their counterparts in 2004, and should be proud.

Why do the wealth-producing (and yet socialism-loving) blue states continue to subsidize the welfare-sucking leech red states that hate them? Let the red states go in peace. And then let all freedom-loving people carve out their own city-non-state, too.