and, so, the way to terrorize somebody like keith ellison into remembering about issues on the left is to threaten them electorally on the left through the creation of a third party, then yell and scream at them to get policy through when they win.

i think obama may have been more useful to the left than he was, if he had received more pressure from it. those small campaign donations don't seem to have had much of an influence on policy, perhaps because they were so de-centralized and so had no representative body to guide their policies through. i suppose the assumption was that the president would be that body, but that was perhaps a misunderstanding in the body politic. there should have been greater mobilization on the left to see certain policies through - he may have listened. but, the left wanted a benevolent despot.

in order for these small donations campaigns to come attached with any kind of accountability to the ideas used to raise these funds, donors need to organize directly and find a way to lobby the president after he wins.