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Thanks for the reply, my comments regarding a third party where with regard to a US style system where the executive branch is separate from the legislative branch.
I will respectfully disagree with your comments regarding Kerry however. One of the largest problems with how we select our president is the primary system which was reformed post-Watergate. This relies on state primaries where you have to be (in most cases) a "registered" member of a party to participate, whereas a good 30% of the country is "independent." This is how we end up with candidates like Dole, Gore, Bush, Kerry. All were good foot soldiers and had their pros and cons, but were not strong nationally (e.g. Dole lost with Ford in 1976; Gore was routinely trounced in primaries in 1988, often coming in behind Dukakis and Jesse Jackson). McCain would have beat either Bush or Gore hands down in a nationwide election, but he couldn't beat Bush in Republican only primaries.
This past year the primary season was compressed so that a candidate could be selected early and money/time then spent on the presidential race (without going into details there is a financial advantage to doing this as funds spent before the convention are treated differently from funds spent after the convention). When it became apparent that Dean had a genuine chance at the nomination, and he was a pure party outsider I firmly believe that the Dem National Committee decided he had to be stopped, that is why they drafted Gen Wesley Clark, when he fumbled they closed ranks behind Kerry. All of a sudden Ted Kennedy's staff became available to Kerry, the Clinton's closed ranks behind him, and in the end he won the nomination because he wasn't Dean, and his strongest point in the general election was he wasn't Bush....which wasn't enough to win either the electorial or the popular vote. His choice of a VP was downright horrific. Not only couldn't Sen Edwards carry his home state, but the Senate seat he vacated was won by a Republican. I think he's an honorable man, but he was so unpopular that even after winning all three debates he still lost the general election.
Be careful of looking at voter numbers, I live in Oklahoma and Bush won every county, not because he was ultra-popular, but Kerry wrote the state off early and didn't run a single advert. Bush did likewise in states like NY and CA. No way was he going to win those two so he spent his money elsewhere, and Kerry got some 80% of the two most popular states. We'll never know but I think Dean would've done better. The turnout was better this time, but it was still poor for the 18-25 year old demographic. Dean was the only true anti-war candidate, and he could have galvanized that vote, similar to what Jesse Ventura did in Minn when he ran for governor. There are more than 30,000 students at Ohio State University, most didn't vote, if Dean motivated them to turn off the playstation and vote he could've carried that state.
The last President to come directly from the House/Senate was JFK, all others have been either state governors or VPs. There was no reason to think that a relatively liberal senator from Massachusetts could win a nationwide election. President Clinton was a Southern Governor who ran as a moderate and governed as a centrist. Until the Dems go back to that strategy, return to their roots as a populist "everyman" party they will have a hard time in future elections.
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