Where is anyone saying you don’t have the right to be mad when the Major Party that represents you squashes Progressives. I sure don’t see that anywhere in this thread.

All I see is that people are telling you that you have every right to fight for Progressive candidates, but when push comes to shove and the choice is between the Red tyrant, and the Blue spineless creature, don’t be distracted by the Green and Yellow ‘protest’ votes because you didn’t get the progressive you wanted. The cost of doing that may well see our Republic replaced by a Republican Dictatorship.

Imma about to drop some history on you. The United States has only seen three instances of a Minor Party becoming a Major Party in its history, and all three changes corresponded with the first three ‘Party Systems’ in the United States. The Zeroth Party System (my own term) was that idealistic time when Washington publicly advocated for no parties, while aligning himself with what would arise as the First Party System in 1789. This put Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans against the Adams’ and Hamilton-led Federalists. Both parties had a bit of a breakdown in the early 1820s, with Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans breaking off into a more Jacksonian Democratic Party as Jeffersonian principles got left behind, and the Federalists outright replaced by the Whigs, as the Second Party System got started. Then, as Slavery became a big issue, the Whigs got left behind by events as the Republicans emerged to oppose the Democrats in the Third Party System.

The Whigs being replaced by the Republicans was the last time a Minor Party rose to prominence in US politics, despite there being between 3 and 4 more party systems. The Fourth Party System saw the Republicans grow out of their anti-Slavery roots as they became the party of Industrialisation, while the Democrats continued their historical role as Voice of the South and everything that represented. The Democrats started evolving away from their role of being the party of Southern Landowners to more speaking for the common man as Northern Democrats embraced FDR’s New Deal. And the Sixth System saw the Republicans embrace the dissatisfied Southern (Conservative) Democrats when the Democrats embraced minorities after the 1960s. Not once after 1856 has any party come anywhere close to upsetting the Democrats and Republicans, with MAYBE the closest being Ross Perot in the 1990s.

There’s a new realignment going on now. Civil Rights has been absorbed into a much larger question. The Republicans and their core Southern Dixiecrat constituency has decided that the work of winning elections should be dispensed with, and they given dictatorial powers in the United States. Let me make this clear to you, Ensign. You grumble about how mean the Dems are to Progressives. We just want to remind you that Republican voters are gleefully sharing pictures of a stolen cartoon character wearing Trump’s hair and a Nazi SS officer’s uniform, forcing people ranging from Hillary and Obama, through people like you, down to Minorities and Jews and Gays, into very clear cartoon reproductions of gas chambers and ovens. We’re saying that the OTHER side will be following the rules of “Vote for our guy in the closest Major Party primary, and the Major Party candidate closest to our ideology in the General.” Either we do that as well, or we go down like the Left did in Iran in 1980 when the Ayatollah in Iran outlawed the very same Anarchists, Intellectuals, Artists, and Leftists that worked with him to overthrow the Shah.