2009: the year of the fake Democrat

Stories like this make me ask if there's any difference whatsoever betwixt the Republicans and the Democrats.

Some of the most important elections in America this year don't even have a real Democrat running - not like the Republican is any better. They have a candidate who claims the Democratic label, but would not be recognizably Democratic by the standards we have a right to expect.

Voters in Virginia appear to have only 2 choices in the election for governor: Republican Bob McDonnell and so-called Democrat Creigh Deeds. McDonnell is an extremist nut, a Pat Robertson follower who supports outlawing birth control even for married couples. Despite McDonnell's lunacy, Deeds isn't much better: He supports gluttonous work-for-less laws and pulling Virginia out of national health care reform.

Democrats in New York City lack a bona fide mayoral candidate in this 9-person contest. Instead they have Bill Thompson - who as head of the city's school system advocated the right-wing policy of making school uniforms mandatory.

Based on these stances, Creigh Deeds and Bill Thompson are both so far to the right of not just the Democratic mainstream but also of voters' mainstream that there's no way I could endorse either one. True to form, Thompson and Deeds are also among the few Democrats in major elections this year who appear likely to lose - which underscores why the party should run real candidates.

If the Democrats refuse to field competitive candidates in 2 of the most important elections in the land, it proves they didn't learn shit from the electoral debacles of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Because they won't learn, we have to muster our energy behind an alternative such as the Greens.

We have to demand that the media give as much time to progressive populist alternatives as they do to the Republican and Democratic parties that are fused at the trough.

Considering the Republicans' continuing downfall, I'd love to see what the results in Virginia and New York City would be if the Democrats actually had a candidate.