You guys just made my point for me.

We have Eleua and MrGone, two polar opposites.

Ok, here's Joe, Third-Party Candidate:

<Right>: Vote for me, I'm pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-kissing babies!
<Left>: Vote for me, I'm pro-choice, believe in reasonable gun restrictions, and pro-kissing babies!

<Joe>: Both Right and Left have told you want you want to hear. But what they haven't told you is that they both supported, and will support, stealing $40,000 of your money to pay off fat-cat bankers on Wall Street. I'm not going to play their game. What I am running on, and will do is lock up every one of those bastards that stole your money if you send me to Washington. I believe we must first have honest government and honest business in this nation and if you send me to Washington that all I'm going there to do - nothing more or less. When you and your children are broke and destitute, homeless and hungry, which is exactly where this sort of gotcha-politics is leading the country at breakneck speed, your first priority is and should be finding a decent job and being able to feed your family. You can't do that while the fatcats are robbing you blind. I'll stop it - neither of the other candidates will. Paid for by Joe for Congress.


Now the "Base" on both the left and right has to guess. Is Joe Pro Life or Pro Choice? They don't know. Is he pro-gun or not? They don't know. But what they do know is that they're going broke fast and the country is on the wrong track, and both the Dems and Pubs haven't fixed it - despite 40 years of trying.

Maybe Joe doesn't win on that platform, but he also doesn't destroy the candidacy of the guy he is most-closely aligned with.

The fallacy of playing to and trying to attract EITHER the left or right's base is that you INSTANTLY alienate the other side once you do. But you need the middle and some of both bases to win. Mathematically, if you appeal to either base you are guaranteed to lose, because you can't get enough of the base from the other party, and there aren't enough independents you CAN gain without alienating the independents on the other side AND the entirety of the other side's base.

This is the math folks, and it doesn't matter if you like it or not. If you adopt EITHER base's positions - any of them - you lose. That's the beginning and end of it and it's why the Democrats and Republicans design their campaigns this way. It's why they run them this way. And if you, as a third party, run your campaign on their plan, YOU ARE MATHEMATICALLY GUARANTEED TO LOSE.

The only winning play is not to engage either of them.

That's the only shot you have, and if you lose going down this road you also won't destroy the guy who is closest to what you believe in on the social issues.

If you try to appeal to either base you will do exactly that. In that case you lose and so does your second choice.

Stop being stupid.

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