However, I voted for Kerry because even though I didn't support him affirmatively, I recognized that a vote against Bush was, at that time, for me, more important than waiting around for a real principled and courageus Dem to turn up, most likely in the ashes of a planet BushCo isintent on destroying.

What I'm getting at here is not whether to repudiate cowardly, self absorbed Dems or not; what I'm getting at is not whether we should be supporting Dems against more destructive Repubs even when those Dems fail to stand up for our beliefs and liberties. No, what I'm getting at is simply this. Can we recognize that there are times when it serves us best to support a weak Dem as a bulwark against a greater "evil", just as there are times when it may serve us best to repudiate the Dem capitulators utterly?

For me I don't see this in terms of it all being an "absolutist" either/or kind of choice, and I guess I'm wondering if there are others who share that view.

Most of my voting has been guided in the past more by voting against the greater nasty, since I've always found it difficult to vote for people who devote so much energy to trying to deceive me into thinking they're more principled than they are. And much of the time I haven't voted at all, being so thoroughly disgusted with the hypocrisy from all sides that I somply put no faith in the political system at all.

Now I find my calculus on things has changed somewhat. The sheer size of the threat posed by the Bush regime; the capacity for destruction now apparent in their accumulationm of power and their corruption of government and ndermining ofthe very fundamentals of democracy; all this leads me toward a sense of greater urgency. I want to help stop these psychopaths. YI want to do whatever I can to add to the effort that might hwepl prevent them and their kind from overthrowing our demcracy and instituting their authoritarian police-state tyranny on all of us. To that end I find myself thinking about a broader array of methods we might use to combat them.

So, let me ask you. Do you think there are times when it's appropriate to vote for a bum who doesn't support if doing so might stop a worse buy from getting power? And, conversely, do you think there are times when not supporting a sellout from your own party is more important than whether a person from the other party wins as a result?

I recognize there are times when either choice might be advantageous, even when distasteful.

Denial is our most dangerous adversary.