Sooner or later enough people will be fed up with the current mess and see that the "two-party system" is the root cause of most of our problems.
I agree, and I can't speak to you specifically, but the REAL problem is no one seems to take substantive action until an election.
If you support people with libertarian principles, the time to make a difference is not to wait until the general election and toss your vote to a 3rd party candidate.
You can support a 3rd party without voting 3rd party. I joined the LP years ago. They know they have my support if they ever get a candidate with enough support to have a chance.
Take advantage of social media. "numbers matter" and you can show your support LONG before an election by joining the LP OR for FREE (if you don't have $15 or $25 a year to support true freedom) just join their facebook group. That allows you and others to see what kind of support is REALLY out there for liberty minded candidates.
If you can see that a facebook group for a 3rd party candidate has 5000 members and perhaps they are a state-level race where 5000 votes usually wins the seat, THEN you can make a confident push to vote in a 3rd party candidate.
So if you are pro-3rd party, you need to make sure you are networked with other pro 3rd party people so that you can gauge the true level of support you have and so OTHERS know how much support you have and don't feel like they are voting for a candidate who can't win.
Having said all that I'll be honest... I've been reading the "issues" section of lots of the "non-front runner" candidates this past election cycle. Those for governor, those for senate. I don't see any libertarians. Just more republicans who hold libertarian beliefs on 1 or 2 specific issues but are pretty much carbon copy of the republicans on all others, but doesn't have enough support to get the republican party nod, so they go 3rd party to attract the "rebellious" vote.
But again, the effective path to get a 3rd party candidate in office without flushing our countries future in the process is to get active WAY before elections and join and network with REAL principled liberty-based groups so you can see the hard numbers of what support you have an make intelligent strategic decisions about when you have enough critical mass to win an election.
I'll remind you all that both Heller and McDonald were 5-4 decisions.
You may not like voting for the lesser of 2 evils, but I've got news for you.
Supreme court appointments are FOR LIFE and massive entitlement programs like Obamacare become exponentially more difficult to repeal once people become dependent upon them.
If a couple more libertarians who voted for Bush voted for Gore, Heller and McDonald would NOT have been in our favor. Gore would have been elected and he would have stacked the court with anti-gun liberals who have LIFETIME appointments
Look at social security. Once FDR rolled that massive freedom sapping entitlement down the mountain it was impossible to stop and look at it now. Huge segments of the population are 100% dependent on it.
What happens when Obamacare destroys private insurance and private healthcare. When people become DEPENDENT on the government for their healthcare. How will you convince people to vote to get rid of a program the majority of americans will be dependent upon for something as basic and critical as medical care.
So YES we need to get true libertarians in office. But we can't drop the reigns in the process.
There is a calculated intelligent way to get libertarians in office and that is by making sure that your support of them is known and documented. By joining the LP whether by official membership or just using free social media, you can add your support to the "number" that people see and know exists so that collectively you'll know (and others like you will know) when you have the critical mass to switch your vote away from a 2-Party vote) and WIN an election, not just throw an election to the WORSER of 2 alternatives.
In the meantime, what you'll also find is that more and more people become readily identifiable with TRUE liberty, you'll find the main-stream party (republicans/democrat) will begin to shift as well to a more freedom minded platform.
Lastly. the one other thing you will find when you have REALLY adopted libertarian principles is that there are MILLIONS of other people who SEEM to be libertarians as well. But
most of them are "libertarians but" They believe in almost every true-freedom principle except one or two. And unfortunately,
you either believe in freedom or you don't. There is no middle ground.
The issue
you accept less than true freedom in
your beliefs corresponds to a different issue someone else who claims to believe in freedom is a hold-out on. The number of people who REALLY believe in freedom ACROSS THE BOARD is not as many as you'd think.