Mr. Nolan should be commended for running and for admitting that winning is a long shot. No false
hopes here. The LP has to face reality that there will be no political revolution without an ideological revolution first. As long as 95% of the people are happy with the two party system, where both loot the other side's supporters (and even their own when they can get away with it), then the LP will not have political success. So, the LP has to operate as one more cog in the ideological revolution - which may not come for many years, if ever. This means tuning the message to distinguish it from other parties, keeping an edge without macho-flashing (as Mr. Cloud warned against), running candidates who can articulate the message, and leveling with supporters and financiers that victory is not around the corner.

There are quite a few local officeholders, and there have been state legislators who were Libertarians in the past. It is not strictly necessary for the idelogical revolution to occur before Libertarian victory can occur. What IS necessary, I believe, is that we field serious candidates who intend to win, get reelected, build a base of support, and who will stick with the LP when time comes to seek higher office. The loyalty must go both ways. If good candidates run under the Libertarian banner, then at least LP members and registered LP voters must VOTE for them, and not cross party lines to vote for Demos or GOP candidates that are perceived as being "more electable." I cannot tell you how disappointed I am, the day after election day, to learn that serious, well-qualified Libertarian candidates did not earn anywhere near the number of votes in my county as there are registered Libertarians. If we don't have the courage of our convictions to get out and vote for our own quality candidates, how can we inspire anyone else to vote for them?

Kudos to David Nolan for walking the talk, and the best of luck to him in this race.

With all due respect, true libertarian, there cannot be Libertarian victory without an ideological revolution. I didn't say "a" Libertarian victory. Obviously, in certain times and places a Libertarian has won. In most cases, it is a one shot victory or an office that was non-partisan or that no one cares about, such as judge of elections. How many Libertarian state legislators have been re-elected and where are our "safe" seats? As long as we continue to believe we can win without an ideological revolution, we will be marginalized, frustrated,
burnt out, and unsuccessful.

Creech-

There can't be "safe" seats until there are a lot of Libertarians in the offices that draw up the districts. But the deeper question is, were there that many Libertarians in office, would we engage in the heinous gerrymandering that the Demos and GOP keep giving us? If our seats were ever "safe," would we still be Libertarians?

I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I can think of numerous city council members, some county supervisors, and even a DA who were re-elected, sometimes several times each. True, those were non-partisan offices, but not insignificant ones, and in each case much was made of the candidate's affiliation with or membership in the LP by the opponents. (This is another reason why I don't buy the "if only we changed the platform" whining. If our (old) platform were such a dealbreaker for the voters, even the candidates we HAVE elected couldn't have made it, because the LP platform is almost always raised as an issue whenever a Libertarian runs, whether the office is partisan or non-partisan. It's an easy shot. But the caliber of that particular political ammo appears to be very low -- rubber pellets.)

We don't need ideological revolution. We need more and more re-elected libertarians, to show that 1) Libertarians bring something valuable to government; and 2) the sky doesn't fall with Libertarians in office. We definitely need to make more of the successes we HAVE had, in order to illustrate those points.

Yes, I guess we will have to disagree on this.
If the vast bulk of American voters believe in something for nothing, abdicate personal responsibility, and ignore reality -- which they
seem to do in electing Republicans and Democrats --- then Libertarianism as such cannot prevail without an ideological revolution. So we can leave the ideological revolution to others (Cato,
Atlas Society, Reason, etc.)or we can recognize that the LP can use political campaigns to advance
that revolution.