Who Speaks for us Crazy Progressives?

{NOTE: I'm posting this so that you guys can begin to think about your responses, I'm probably going to continue to edit it. If there are any heinous grammatical errors I apologize I'll continue to look at this post tonight and tomorrow, unfortunately my attempt to assimilate into French-Canadian society calls}

I want to stay on the theme of progressive politics for this week. What I want to consider is whether it would be possible for a legitimate third party to come to a position of prominence in the United States, and if such a thing could happen is it actually desirable.

One of my well known rants is that, while I recognize that I stand pretty far to the left of the "average" American, I wish that there was someone that was a part of the existing political structure that was representing the far left’s point of view WITHIN government. I mean, I love Feingold and Frank (Frank mostly because he’s large, gay and hilarious) as much as the next guy but they are still part of the democratic/republican power structure.

One of the central problems of the past few years is that the Democrats were foolishly tacking right, trying to appeal to people who they were fundamentally never going to appeal to rather then reaching out to the good old fashioned, disillusioned left. I told myself after casting a half-hearted vote for John Kerry that I was never going to vote for a candidate who I didn't believe in again. Alas, it seemed I might be doomed to a life of Naderdom. However, as I considered the implications of Naderdom I realized that that was no more of a reasonable option. I decided I would never vote for a candidate who did not meet AT LEAST two of these three criteria.
1. They would actually make a good president
2. They were genuinely espousing views that I believed in.
3. That the campaign would appeal to broad swath of people and thus allow GOOD ideas to leak into the mainstream.

I say two of the three because I understand the necessary need for compromise in government. Nate Silver at Fivthirtyeight.com laid this out very recently. I would argue that I am a “Rational Progressive” to use his terminology. However, I need to believe in something tangible beneath the typical ideological nonsense. Kerry, for instance met none of these criteria (perhaps the second but only in a generic Democrat kind of way). Nader only met the second (he would just be a hideous president if it ever came to that). What good are progressive ideas if we never get anywhere with them?

One of the problems is the puditocratic definitions of "centre, right and left". I remember breathless commentators saying after the 2006 congressional elections that the "center of American Politics had moved left". My response was "the center hasn't moved to the left, the center has always been against having sex with twelve year old boys. It just happens the Republicans have done more of that this time around."
All of this led me to become somewhat enamored with the Canadian Parliamentary system, wherein there are multiple parties, legitimately TWO to the left of the Liberals. There were a few things that drew me to this political system.

FIRST: confidence votes. For example, in 2006 Paul Martin's liberal government was toppled. Now I prefer the Liberals to the Conservatives in pretty much every way, but the Liberals got fat and lazy. They assumed that because they were the party most of the country related to they could do pretty much whatever they wanted. I think the fact that you can lose power at any time is an incentive to keep you on your toes. Plus, you can imagine in early 2006 on the heels of Katrina how the thought of being able to change leaders mid-stream was appealing.

SECOND- I didn't have to be upset the liberals lost because it was likely to open up more spots for the New Democratic Party anyway.
However, my views on this have evolved a touch over the past couple years. Maybe this is inevitable "shift towards the centre as I get old, rich and fat" syndrome but I don't think so. What is becoming clear in the Canadian system is that while the Conservatives remain a relatively small but focused party (not unlike what the successful version of the Republicans was), the liberals are represented by three parties (Liberal, NDP and Green). As long as this is the case Canada is likely doomed to a series of Conservative minority governments. Recently the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois have proposed toppling the Stephen Harper’s Conservative government with a coalition government where the Liberals and NDP would share power. In theory, this sounds like a great idea, and I am curious as to whether it would have worked.

I'm not going to get into the specifics of the proposed coalition here because quite honestly I only have so many hours in the day with which to write but my fear is that the nature of electoral politics will inevitably cause people to leave the other more progressive alternatives for the safe-liberals in order to defeat a conservative government. Now, let me stress I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing, and in fact if I was able to vote, I likely would be in that camp because I’m a fan of Micheal Ignatiff, the new Liberal leader. The problem is that we will eventually revert back to the progressives being an annoying voice in the background without any real impact.

Now, I'm overstating the problem in Canada because the fact of the matter is there is plenty of progressive to go around. What I want to address is what is going to happen in the U.S. Here is one scenario:
Since so many moderate republicans were among those who got picked off in the most recent elections it is increasingly becoming a party that is limited to the south and pockets of the west (where no one lives).

The flip side is that, obviously, many of the moderate republicans were replaced by "moderate" democrats. Really people who would have been republicans 15 or 20 years ago before the party completely lost its collective shit. What has happened is that a handful of moderates wield an inordinate amount of power because they have the ability hold the rest of the party hostage.

My suspicion is that in the coming years it is not going to be so trendy to be a Republican, which is going to lead people to come up as affiliated with a different party. However this is likely to fill an already bloated Democratic party to the point of exploding. Which, and I’ll put the time frame of this as 15-20 years, will lead the left part of the democratic part to split in to what will essentially amount to a New England and California party; leaving us with a centrist party and two flanking ideological parties.

I'm not sure this is such a great scenario. I've begun to wonder if the real answer is in trying to elect as many progressive democrats as possible to try to counteract the blue-dogs (essentially the Daily-Kos strategy).
So here are my questions that we should get at throughout the week
1. Is it possible to conceive of an American liberal third-party that would make sense and could legitimately win elections?
2. If so is this desirable?
3. In this new technological age, does the progressive left actually get enough airing compared to how it used to be, or to put it another way is the best way for the progressive left to get its voice heard within the confines of government?
4. Is the Republican Party really as dead and pathetic as they look?
5. Should I just become a Canadian citizen and get it over with?