I just posted the following at a Green Party tribe, and thought it worthy of copying & pasting here.

Here's Elizabeth's (people.tribe.net/wildsagexo) opening to the thread:

I have had a "Think Green" bumper sticker on my car for awhile.....I had two notes left anonymously to my windshield recently. The first one said, "It is because of you greens and independents that we are in the state we are in now......How can you vote any other way other than democrat now. Ask your parties to take their candidates off the ballots in November of this year and in 2008...So that we may live in a peaceful and "green" world." The other note was much more negative...but had the same message....

I find it cowardly that they left in anonymously. Iironically, I believe a little of what they say to be true....not that "we" lost the election for them, but that we need to join together and replace this government with one more democratic and yes, "Green". An Independent or Green will never win a presidential election, so why run? Why doesn't the left, get organized, get together, and get this government out of office?
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And here is my response:

In the past six years, I've found it very difficult to shake the belief from embittered Democrats, that Nader's presence on the Florida ballot threw the election. No matter how much you tell them about the evidence that Katherine Harris stole the election there, and would have whether Nader was there or not, these folks can't get over themselves. No matter what hypotheticals you present about if 9/11 happened under a Gore presidency, would things be any different, or would Gore be under pressure to mount a war on terror(ism) just to avoid the perception of weakness, Dems aren't buying it.

Regarding Green presidential candidacy in general, of course it is ridiculous to presume that the Green candidate, no matter how popular, has a chance in hell of winning. It's also ridiculous to presume that our current electoral system is all that democratic. It is designed to keep alternative parties under the radar, so that the Greens or Libertarians trying to join in seems as ridiculous as a third team walking into a football game, saying, "We wanna play!" You run to make a statement, to give progressives something to vote for, to show the Democrats how much of their base they have lost by migrating to the rightward-shifting center.

As a veteran of the 2000 campaign, I come down in favor of running for President because without somebody at the top of the ticket, you wind up with no coattail effect, no media exposure at all. As 2004 proved, however, you really need a recognizable name in that slot. My pal David Cobb does not have a nationally known name like Ralph Nader's. But he should be better known, because he is one of the best campaign speakers I have ever seen.

Finally, if we take ourselves at all seriously as a movement, it is essential to have candidates for local offices, when party label applies (e.g., Houston's city government elections are officially non-partisan, but our county government does use party labels). I would run as a Green for state legislature in my own district, but I'm happy with the very competent, moderately progressive Democrat we have in Austin, another old acquaintance of mine. That is, I would run, if not for the various skeletons in my wide-open closet--such as my postings on tribe.net.