It’s a trick question. The next presidential primary is happening right now.

The Illinois Green Party is holding an open presidential primary online. The online primary started on February 1 and ends on February 16.

To be eligible, voters need to be residents of Illinois, and above the age of 12. I did a bit of a doubletake myself when I saw that age requirement, but it’s true: The Illinois Green Party allows all teenagers to vote in its presidential primary.

A person does not have to be previously registered as Green to vote in the Illinois Green Party primary. Registrations are accepted at the same time as voting.

This means that eager teenage citizens in Illinois, jumping at the chance to vote before the rest of their cohort, could have a major impact on the selection of the Green Party’s presidential candidate.

Green Party caucuses are also being held across the state of Illinois, but these do not include a binding vote. They’re more like voter outreach events. One is being held in Wheaton this afternoon from between 3:00 and 5:00 at 213 South Wheaton Ave.

In presidential politics, this ideal of secular government is routinely ignored. Presidential candidates go to outlandish lengths to prove their Christianity to voters, saying that they’ve received direct orders from the Christian god to make a run for the White House. Barack Obama attends extremist right wing religious events like the Prayer Breakfast, has preacher Rick Warren convert his inauguration into a religious ceremony, and talks about how the Bible dictates White House policies. One would think that these politicians are campaigning to become Preacher In Chief.

A short statement about religion made by presidential candidate Rocky Anderson therefore comes as a welcome surprise.

When Anderson was asked during an online discussion, “What religion are you a part of?”, he gave the following response:

“None. I decided when in college that I should carefully consider the best ethical course for my life, then follow those guideposts, without focusing on the theological issues that divert so many people from doing the work that needs to be done, particularly on behalf of those who are most vulnerable and who need the help. I respect those who have, and who live, religious beliefs and values and believe that we each have our own way of making a positive difference while on earth.”

Rocky Anderson’s declaration of no religion, combined with acceptance of other people’s different ideas about religion, is a startling reminder of the approach counseled by the founders of the USA. The Constitution supports freedom of religion through separation of religion and government. Under this arrangement, decisions about religion are private, and not relevant to political debates. Whether a person wants to be religious or not is their own business, not something that the power of government ought to influence either way.

It’s interesting to see what Rocky Anderson said, and what he didn’t say. He said that he’s not part of any religion. That could mean that Rocky Anderson is an atheist. It could mean that he has some individual religious beliefs, but is not a member of any religious organization. What’s important is that Anderson puts such questions in their proper context: Theological debates about religious identity are less important than what we do in the world to try to make it a better place.

What Rocky Anderson is willing to say, while Obama and the Republicans strike poses of conspicuous Christianity, is that a presidential candidate ought to be judged according to deeds, rather than religious creeds.

“Obama was embracing corporate money,” Stein wrote, speaking in praise of former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, who had also denounced Obama’s decision to accept independent expenditures without protest. Feingold said, “The President is wrong to have embraced the corrupt corporate politics of Citizens United and that’s what you’re doing when you start using and consorting with Super PACs.”

“Whomever Barack Obama may have once been, that man is not occupying the White House today,” Stein said.

Who could withstand the onslaught of warm air and occasional drizzle? But they should have known. The Washington state legislature voted to legalize same-sex marriage on February 8, and the day before that a court in California struck down laws against same-sex marriage. This punishment through horrible warmness and light rain is the natural outcome.

At least that’s what fundamentalist Christian leaders John Hagee and Pat Robertson and Stephen Bennett and John Piper and Graham Dow and Yehuda Levin say. They say that weather is God’s divine judgment against communities embracing sodomicious equal rights. So yea, people of Seattle, tho ye quaver and ye shake yon fisties at the heavens, know this is a Mighty Tepid Mist of DOOM! Los Angeles, you’re next! In a few weeks! Maybe!

Actually, two different GOP presidential candidates won the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, and events proved Americans Elect wrong just four days later when a third GOP candidate won the South Carolina primary, tossing the GOP race up for grabs.

That didn’t stop Americans Elect from trying the same line again. In a news release dated February 2, just two days after Mitt Romney won his second primary victory, Americans Elect seemed to be eager to declare him the GOP winner already so it could recast itself as the democratic alternative:

Only four states have had a chance to vote in the GOP primaries, but experts are saying the process is over. Are voters happy?

But actual democracy soon intervened again to counter the Americans Elect narrative. On February 7, voters in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri handed election victories to Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney. Now Mitt Romney has won the majority of delegates, Rick Santorum has won the majority of states, while Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich are continuing to campaign through the Super Tuesday primaries of March 6. By the end of that night Republican voters in 21 states will have cast their votes. In short, the GOP nomination looks to be an actual election involving large numbers of voters.

Whatever number of people have voted in the Republican presidential nomination process, it seems to not be enough to meet Americans Elect’s standards. Back in January, Americans Elect complained about “Only 369,448 Votes” in Iowa and New Hampshire. But with the addition of South Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, there have now been 3,022,769 votes cast.

In contrast, Americans Elect has had its own online presidential nomination ballot qualification vote going on around the clock for nine full days now. How many cumulative votes has it attracted over those 9 days, and what has the cumulative vote count in the Republican race been? Results as of this morning:

Only 6,429 votes had been cast in the Americans Elect process, just two-tenths of one percent of the participation in the Republican process. If 369,448 votes are meager, what does that make 6,429 votes? The disparity is cast in starker terms when one realizes that in the Americans Elect process, one person can vote many times. The actual number of people participating in the Americans Elect process, despite media coverage in every major TV network and newspaper, is even smaller than the number of votes.

The vote totals for particular Americans Elect contenders tell an even bleaker picture: unless Americans Elect changes its voting procedure in the middle of the voting — a highly irregular move — it doesn’t look as though anyone will qualify for the Americans Elect ballot at all. According to the rules published during the first day of the ballot qualification vote, political insiders will have to obtain 10,000 votes of support and political outsiders will have to obtain 50,000 votes of support by May 15. By that standard, with 9 days gone and 96 days left to go, only Ron Paul (with 1,372 votes of support as of this morning) is on pace to obtain 10,000 votes by May 15.

But wait, there’s more. Even Ron Paul isn’t actually on pace to get on the Americans Elect ballot, because there’s a second standard he has to meet. For reasons that aren’t immediately clear, only the first thousand votes for a candidate in a state will be counted toward the 10,000 vote total, and only the ten states with the most votes will count have their votes counted toward that 10,000 vote total. The 10,000 votes have to consist of 1,000 votes in each of 10 and only 10 states. As of now, these are the top ten states from which Ron Paul has received support in the Americans Elect vote:

California: 144 votes
Texas: 107 votes
Florida: 97 votes
New York: 73 votes
Virginia: 58 votes
Pennsylvania: 54 votes
Ohio: 48 votes
Michigan: 44 votes
Washington: 43 votes
Illinois: 42 votes

Did you notice that these are the most populous states of the United States? That’s not a coincidence; for all its talk of democracy, the Americans Elect process effectively disenfranchises small states, which with smaller populations are unlikely to scrape together 1,000 votes for anybody. It’s the big states that will either qualify or not qualify a candidate for the Americans Elect nomination. At this rate, with 9 days gone and 96 left to go, Ron Paul will only get 1,000 votes in California, Texas and Florida by May 15.

And the other Americans Elect draft candidates? Insider or outsider, they aren’t on pace to get 1,000 votes of support in any state at all.

The bottom line is that while Americans Elect corporate leaders complain about lack of participation in the Republican nomination, the Americans Elect vote is far, far less popular. To deal with its lack of support, Americans Elect will have to mount a huge publicity campaign very soon, or it will have to change the rules of its voting in the middle of its vote, or it will have to benefit from a well-funded candidate who decides to invest significant funds, or it will have to leave its ballot empty in 2012.

A liberal is someone who supports liberal ideals: Peace, human rights, constitutional freedoms, eradication of the corrupt influence of corporations in American politics. That definition sounds obvious.

The problem is that many liberals aren’t liberals any more.

These days, many people who call themselves “liberal” support downright anti-liberal policies. In fact, a large number of people who describe themselves as “liberal” now support some of the most radically right wing policies of George W. Bush.

This sad new political reality is reflected in a new poll by the Washington Post. The poll finds that 53 percent of people who call themselves “liberal Democrats” support keeping the unconstitutional, extralegal prison at Guantanamo Bay open. 55 percent of these self-described “liberal Democrats” support allowing the President to perform long-distance executions of American citizens without criminal trial.

Glenn Greenwald calls this turn of “liberal Democrat” opinion to embrace the policies begun by George W. Bush “repulsive” – and he’s right. Greenwald is also correct in identifying the reason for the great liberal flip flop: Barack Obama has embraced these Bush policies, and many people who like to call themselves “liberal” really don’t have any ideology. They just love Barack Obama, and so they figure that if Barack Obama does something, it must be okay.

These people aren’t liberals. They’re blind partisans. They’re followers. They’re fans. They treat politics as if it’s a football game. They’ve decided that they support the Democratic team, and whatever the leaders of the Democratic team tell them is right, they will believe is right.

This lazy attitude is so low that it isn’t even immoral. It’s absolutely amoral.

Now, before I go too far, I want to make it clear that I do not believe that there is no difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. There is a significant difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. The biggest difference, however, seems to be that Democrats think whatever Democratic Party leaders tell them to think, while Republicans think whatever Republican Party leaders tell them to think.

Liberals are supposed to be against the corrupt influence of corporate power in elections. Now, though, Barack Obama has openly invited corporate-run Super PACs to make independent expenditures of money that comes from nobody-knows-where on his behalf. So, many liberals are praising Obama’s move, saying that it shows that he’s strong.

Liberals are supposed to be against Presidents ignoring congressional authority and declaring war whenever they want to. Once Barack Obama did it, though, too many liberals rushed to defend Obama’s action, saying that anyone who thins that Presidents couldn’t take the nation off to war on a whim is an idiot.

Liberals are supposed to be environmentalists. But, when Barack Obama announced that he wouldn’t even try to pass legislation to deal with climate change, many liberals clapped loudly, saying, “President Obama sure is good at that long game!” When Barack Obama declared that he would expand offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, even though there are no new regulations from Congress to protect us against the kind of massive disaster that took place when the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig exploded, large numbers of Democrats willingly pretended that they had no idea that the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history had taken place less than two years ago.

What about the rest of us? What about the minority of “liberals” who actually are liberal? We’re frustrated. We’re depressed. A lot of the time, we don’t know what to do. Sometimes, we feel like we just want to throw in the towel, and give up, because there’s no hope, and nobody that we can believe in, and nothing we can do.

But deep in our hearts, we know that’s BULLSHIT.

Here’s What We DO:

We replace our despair with anger, and we grow a backbone.

We rip that Barack Obama bumper sticker off the car. We toss that Barack Obama campaign button in the garbage. We throw that Barack Obama tshirt on a campfire and piss on it while it burns.

Then, we pick someone better. There are two good, really good, liberal choices this year: Their names are Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson. Both are running for President. Pick one to support. Support both, if you like.

Then, the next time you meet one of your “liberal” friends who starts talking about how wonderful Barack Obama is, you do not turn your head away sheepishly and change the subject of the conversation. You say to your friend, “I thought you were liberal, but I don’t understand how any liberal can support the terrible right wing policies that Barack Obama has been promoting. Many of them are the same policies that you told me you were against when George W. Bush promoted them. Why have you changed your values?”

Then, you pull a Rocky Anderson for President button or a Jill Stein for President button out of your pocket and you pin it on your chest.

You put a bumper sticker on your car for Stein or Anderson, too. You wear a tshirt to the protests that the Democrats don’t support anymore.

You hold a house party for Jill Stein or Rocky Anderson, and you invite your liberal friends. You’ll find out which ones are liberal and which ones are “liberal”.

What you do is get active and stay active, because the fact is that being sad and silent about Barack Obama’s terrible embrace of right wing politics is just as bad as being an unthinking Obama loyalist.

For our country and for our world, we need better leadership than what Barack Obama is willing to offer. There’s only one way for us to get better leadership: We have to be better citizens.

Sarasota, Florida, June 16 2011: Mitt Romney appears at Sarasota Yacht Club private fundraiser.

Naples, Florida, November 28 2011: Mitt Romney appears at Naples Yacht Club private fundraiser.

Portland Maine, February 10 2012: Mitt Romney to make his sole campaign stop in the state, appearing at Portland Yacht Services and Marina. Don’t worry, transients are welcome there: “We offer both seasonal mooring/dockage as well as berthing for transient yachts.”

If you’re looking for an alternative, a presidential candidate who consistently supports the separation of church and state, consider Rocky Anderson, who is running as the Justice Party candidate for President. In a recent online discussion, Anderson explained his views on the relationship between religion and government as follows:

“Religion and government should be kept as separate as possible. Government interference or involvement in religion demeans faith. There are ample ways for people to exercise their religious beliefs without government involvement. We should all think in terms of the Golden Rule (or the equivalent in non-Christian denominations or humanitarian traditions) when Church-State issues arise. Let us ask ourselves if we didn’t believe in the religion being promoted by government, how would we feel? We should all value the diversity in religious (and non-religious) traditions and be tolerant and compassionate toward each other.”

Some people might say that there wasn’t any point to showing up for a Democratic Party caucus, because there wasn’t any challenger to Barack Obama on the ballot. The truth is, though, that there’s a lot more that goes on at a caucus than just the selection of a presidential candidate. The caucus is the opportunity Minnesota Democrats have to make their wishes heard on the direction that their political party is taking.

The Daily Show is the opportunity Minnesota Democrats have to listen to some jokes about the news and watch some advertising. The Daily Show doesn’t give Minnesotans the opportunity to get involved. It’s purely passive entertainment.

Some people like to think that they’re getting serious information from the Daily Show, and I won’t deny that some useful information does get included in the humor. Much more important information gets excluded from the Daily Show, however, to make way for fluff. A few days ago, for example, Jon Stewart had an “extended interview” with Brad Pitt, in which the actor “recounts the challenges of getting his movie Moneyball made”.

When Rocky Anderson, presidential candidate of the Justice Party, contacted The Daily Show to schedule an interview, he couldn’t even get a telephone call back in response. “We’ve tried to make contact,” Anderson says. The Daily Show has ignored these efforts.

The Daily Show needs to entertain its audience in order to fulfill its purpose: To get people to watch advertisements. The Daily Show is a corporate creation, owned by Viacom, and Viacom needs to get profits to its shareholders. So, the staff of The Daily Show has the right, and perhaps the financial responsibility, to give Rocky Anderson the cold shoulder. That’s how corporate media works.

In return, however, progressive Americans have the responsibility to give The Daily Show the cold shoulder, and get involved in commercial-free direct politics instead. Jon Stewart’s schtick is a cheap, high-carb substitute for political activism. There’s nothing funny at all about the flab that the Sedentary Left has developed waiting for the latest punchline.