Voting for Tasini would have the entertainment value of needling Bouldin. That might be worth it!

I guess the question is, when is a protest vote worth doing? Certainly one criterion is that the protest vote should never help elect a Republican. That clearly doen't apply here since the Republicans were falling all over themselves NOT to run.

Neddling Michael is such an appealing prospect that even I considered voting for Tasini.

It's the only reason I'm going to be voting for him. I may even vote for John Spencer for the same reason. I'd vote for neither if I thought they had an icicle's chance in an oven of winning, but Hillary's quest for the presidential nomination depends on an air of inevitability and not a lot more. I'm hoping that if she wins by large--instead of overwhelming--margins against Tasini and Spencer, it might slow her presidential bid a little.

You're not going to hurt the Democratic Party's probability of taking back the Senate by voting for Tasini, so why not vote your conscience on:

cluster bombs

The PATRIOT Act

The Iraq War

The death penalty

And how is voting for Hillary a preserved vote? Or a well-cast vote. Or whatever are the electoral antonyms for "wasted vote." If you like Hillary and her triangulations, vote for her. If you think a big primary vote for HRC is a knife in the heart of the Bushies, you would be wrong. That might (note "might") arguably be the general election outcome, but not the primary's. If you don't like Hillary's politics, the only way that dislike gets registered in this primary is in a vote for Tasini. Refraining from casting a US Senate vote will not be noticed. Voting for her when you don't like her politics makes you an enabler.

Those are your possibilities, Liza. Pick one.

Just underscores a major issue I've had with Tasini, which is that he's running for statewide office, but appears to (outside petitioning) only really been running a city race. You didn't show a picture of Tasini in Syracuse, or Tasini in Buffalo or Tasini in Long Island or Albany, you showed Tasini in Union Square, in the city not far from where he lives. It shows he's running to get attention and name recognition in new york city, not new york state.

that forced a decision to be made on concentrating down here. Targeting downstate was based more on a paucity of funding, in order to focus on getting the largest concentration of liberals to send the anti-war, anti-centrist message to Hillary. That doesn't mean the rest of NYS was ignored. Liberal pockets upstate got worked, hard. In Woodstock, judging from the lawn signs alone, Tasini has no competition. I saw not one Hillary sign in a sea of Tasini placards. And his supporters have been active in Ithaca and, to a lesser degree, Rochester and Albany and Buffalo. But, yes, it's not a 62 county strategy. Or even a campaign that can appeal to anyone who's not already disgusted with the mainstream of the party. It can't be that kind of campaign. That might be a reason to conclude the campaign was doomed to be quixotic, and we'll see tonight whether Jonathan tops 20 percent--my goal if no one else's--but it isn't a reason to conclude he's running for "name recognition." Campaigning against Hillary is not a career move; handled badly, it can be a career ending move. Whatever you conclude, I wouldn't infer that this campaign was an opportunist exercise. Or a lemming exercise. I'm glad somebody took Hillary on. Jonathan's issues and articulation of the issues was a textbook for what liberals need to say, and I don't see a collatoral downside to Jonathan's run, for the anti-war movement or for anything else. I just wish the upside hadn't been so fraught with potholes and stink-bomb tossings.

Have read that Hillary Clinton is not even having a victory party tonight. I mean with $33 million in the bank and having had to spend almost none of it, she can afford to have a real soiree. But I guess you don't celebrate victory when you don't consider yourself to have been in a real contest. However, I'm sure she and Bill will be home in Westchester and if Hillary gets more votes than Spitzer today, and sets the record for a statewide democratic party blowout, they'll get out of bed late and pop a bottle of champagne or something