alt prez / By Richard Wall

The Other Candidates For President: Part III

(Sept. 4, 2008)  Two things mark a third-party or independent candidacy for President: the desire to change politics as we know it and the inability to do so. The major minor parties are more effective at scuttling each other’s chances than rousting the two-headed troll that holds absolute power in this country.

For example, you’d think that one socialist party would be enough in these times, when serial killers are more popular than actual leftists. But there are almost as many socialist parties as there are socialists.

GALLERY >

When these Alt Prez candidates aren’t micro-slicing their teeny share of the electoral pie, they’re conducting intra-party raids. The Constitution Party appeals to Libertarians to vote for their guy, and the Boston Tea Party wants to take votes from both, saying neither are true libertarians. Throw in another 130 or so independent candidates and you have chaos on the fringe, where everyone shoots each other in the foot.

But Jimmy Carter may save the day. Not the former President — “The Udder Jimmy Carter,” an optician and goat rancher from Live Oak, Fla., who is the presidential candidate of the Real Food Party.

Carter wants to bring all the independents and minor parties together in an online convention before the next presidential election, and get them all to agree to support just one candidate from among them. This will also attract people who don’t vote, says Carter, resulting in a numerical total that rivals the voting block of each of the two major parties. If that works, the country will be changed forever, and maybe the new President will change the law so Carter can sell un-pasteurized goat milk, one of his secondary goals.

Race for Third Place

How bummed Ralph Nader must be with all these Alt Prez candidates taking votes away from him. Vilified by Democrats as the man who cost the sometimes life-like Al Gore the 2000 election, Nader is also responsible for 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and catastrophic galactic events we don’t even know about yet.

Nader wants to end the two-party monopoly and the influence of money on politics. But he says it’s not about winning, it’s about building a third party, which is confusing since he’s not in a party this year. Otherwise, he’s making perfect progressive sense, as usual:

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