Uh, the Republicans are no longer a major party. Of course, that doesn't mean they'll lose control of the White House, because this is America where a vote in Wyoming (half-million people, 3 electoral votes) counts 5 times as much as in California (36 million, 55 electoral votes).

Wow, your democracy is really weird. I know, ours is weird too, lots of little parties and strange coalitions.

There are only two independents in congress at the moment.

I didn't think that the Green candidate for NY state attorney general would win a few years ago, but I voted for her instead of the Dem because he's in my former neighbor's pocket and I did not want to violate my principles.

How does he feel about the Supreme Court?

Good question; I will ask him tonight.

Every moderate-to-liberal justice on the Supreme Court is over retirement age (Stevens is 88), so the next president will likely determine the makeup of the Supreme Court for decades.

Or people around the president. Good point.
For a few months my father has been reguritating my arguments when we argue politics, his being only through personal likes and some telly media. It's fairly disturbing but he's said he'll vote Obama. He only ever truly votes financially and i've had to illustrate the financial lunacy of the last two terms in between shouting bald facts, but still, it's weird to hear him look like he listened to me.

I don't get this obsession with voting Two-Party. I have voted 3rd party in every presidential election so far, and I don't feel like Nader's supporters "spoiled" it for poor Al Gore, mostly because the numbers simply don't support that assertation (when we remember that most states don't award delegates proportionally). Now, if I lived in a state that actually mattered, I might have a different opinion, but I've only ever voted in California and Texas.

The people I DO despise are the so-called "progressives" who claim they will vote for McCain before they vote for Clinton/Obama (depending on their preference). While McCain may have seemed like a cool, radical, independent sort of dude when he ran for president 8 years ago, he has been courting very different people this time around, and it would be foolish not to recognize that.

UPDATE:

We went to see Thurgood tonight. It was pointed out that Earl Warren was both the one who signed the order to put Japanese-Americans into internment camps and the one who crafted the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Daddy is content to risk this. My thinking is that Warren may not have thought about Japanese in the same way he did blacks. I saw a Hearst-produced silent film in which a Hispanic man (albeit the descendant of a family granted a California ranchero) was the hero and a Japanese man the villain. I shudder to think who McCain, Romney or Jindal might appoint.