A brief description of the 5/25 plan, which I can print here but not at the Daily Kos.

As a way out of the wonderful choice of choosing between the straight up hard right fascist republican party and the center right Democratic Party (which passes right wing legislation that Republicans can only dream of like NAFTA or this mandated healthcare bill...), I've finally started a blog called The 5/25 Third Party Plan. Uh, I just need 35 million dollars to make it work. Didn't say it would be easy.

Here's the new website: just two posts so far but I will build on it.

Here's my first description post:

I'm going to write a much more detailed outline on what the 5/25 plan is when I have a little bit more time. But this is the short version:

Progressives have been locked out of the debate. We have no place in the Republican Party and the Democratic establishment views the progressive left with what can almost be described as outright hostility, with Rahm Emanuel saying that "we're frakin' retards" and "don't worry about the left". And here's the thing: I'm convinced that he might be right because he's convinced that we simply don't have the stones or the moxie to run independent or third party campaigns. Let's prove him wrong about that.

My theory is that we can create viable third party runs because of what we've seen in a number of fund raising attempts by Alan Grayson, Bill Halter and others. We're not running "symbolically". We're running to win.

What do we need to win. We don't need to win every seat everywhere. We're looking for enough seats to create a real progressive block that isn't answerable to the DNC and won't be threatened by Rahm in the shower. A bloc where every member has signed a contract not to work for corporate lobbies after they leave congress. Yes, this bloc would have to be chosen very carefully. Not saying this is going to be easy by the way. (And yes, we would sue if they breach any element of the contract. No more toothless pledges...)

As I've said about a thousand times online at various places, we need to initially shoot for 5 senate seats and 25 house seats. In order to run a viable third party independent campaign you need to raise at least 300000 dollars for a house campaign and 2 million dollars for a senate campaign.

I'll write more on this later.

I also wrote another supporting argument here that outlines, what I think, are misconceptions about third party runs.

Related: I also posted another argument I made along these lines over at the Daily Kos.  So, even though the Examiner is supposedly run by conservatives, I've never been censored here. (Well, I can't write bad words, but I can write "frak" and probably "frell" if that got banned. I don't think that's the biggest thing though. What you write about is where the censorship happens...) But by mentioning the arguments behind a third party effort over at the Daily Kos I was given a warning. I just think that's the weakest part of the Daily Kos game. You might notice that I don't censor people in my comments section for just about any reason, except when they're selling something and sometimes not even then. People are encouraged to challenge anything I say and they're welcome to be rude about it! But I can't do it at the Daily Kos, where Democratic Party activists are supposed to meet and hash things out...?

Here's the thing: I don't support the Democratic Party because they're called the Democratic Party or they wear the blue sash. I support the Democratic Party because, allegedly, they support progressive principles or at least they used to. Now I'm not so sure. There might be an answer in creating a third party. I'm a progressive first. I'll work with whatever party will best help that outcome and that has a reasonable chance of winning. (Right now that isn't third parties but it could be if we start running viable campaigns...)