The concern is understandable based on history. Many of those "Green Party" voters are backing a candidate who, if not the nominee, could wind up voting for the Green Party again. That is why people are angry about that.

We have one campaign whose three top staffers bragged about voting for the Green Party in 2016, we have a highly visible surrogate for that candidate who campaigned for Green Party candidates and AGAINST Democrats in the recent past.

Remember, 2016 Green Party voters were not loyal Democrats in 2016, how do we know they will be this year, too? To quote your OP, "we can't have it both ways".

Every election people make a decision on which candidate bests represents them.

We arent' supposed to have loyalty to a party. A Political party should have loyalty to us.

And we cant' win on just the "Democrat no matter who" crowd. Those people are an ever-shrinking minority.

Nina Turner (Jill Stein voter) is National Co-chair of DEMOCRAT Sanders' 2020 campaign.
Briahna Gray (Jill Stein voter) is National Press Secretary of DEMOCRAT Sanders' 2020 campaign.
David Sirota (Jill Stein voter) is Communications Speechwriter of DEMOCRAT Sanders' 2020 campaign.

...a Democratic nominee other than Sanders (or possibly in some cases Warren). You are right that there is a basis in history for that conjecture. The same is not true though for your assertion that "Many of those "Green Party" voters are backing a candidate who, if not the nominee, could wind up voting for the Green Party again." To the contrary it is patently false. Sanders both endorsed and campaigned for Clinton and asked his supporters to do the same. Some are critical that Sanders didn't do enough to help Clinton, but it would be at a minimum dishonest to state that Sanders might vote Green for President, let alone do so again.

If Sanders gets the nomination, a heck of a lot of Democrats will be voting green because some memories don't go away easily.

An apology from the Sanders camp would have been nice in 2017. Now it is too late to "earn the vote of those voters"

If he is the nominee, I'd get an industrial strength nose clip and vote for him but not everyone has access to those.

A normally Democratic voter, one who voted for Clinton in 2016, but who would consider voting Green instead of backing a Democratic nominee in 2020 would be worthy of the harshest condemnations possible. No "lack of an apology" excuse would cut mustard with our nation on the line.

It was known long before 2016.

I did. I presume you did also along with some millions of other highly tuned in activists. But many people who didn't like Trump expected more garden variety corruption. Many expected an absentee presidency with Trump basking in the vanity of being President while letting McConnell and Pence run the show while ramming through tax breaks for the rich and anti-choice judges. Many thought that there would still be some adults in the room when it came to national security, not that they would all be run out of town by halfway through Trump's first term. Many expected the more or less traditional Republican wink and a nod toward racists, not full throat support for white nationalists and Nazis marching in Virginia. Few expected the entire national Republican Party to be so totally cowed by Trump that Republicans in Congress, the Senate in particular, wouldn't give a fuck if Trump stripped Congress of all legal ability to conduct oversight, in theory as well as practice, etc. etc. etc.

Said he funded investigators to go to Hawaii and “they couldn’t believe what they were finding”.

It’s always been BS. And the repubs only care about democratic corruption. They love republican corruption.

People knew what they were voting for. The Stein supporters said that Trump would hasten the revolution by being so bad....

Nope. I’m not giving a pass here. It was known.

... in 2020 if they are unhappy with the Democratic nominee. I will assume that poster wasn't talking about the type of Clinton voter who stays as well informed as do typical members of DU. I hope I'm not giving too much credit with that assumption.

If Bernie wins, Stein or Tulsi likely won’t be running against him.

Perhaps a moderate or libertarian TP choice would run. But not those two. Gabbard might even be the VP.

He is more than astute enough to realize that a Gabbard pick would do nothing to increase his chances of victory in November and would likely make his path toward victory impossibly narrow. Actually, a Sanders/Gabbard ticket would probably be what it took to make a significant number of Democratic voters actually sit on their hands and not show up to vote against Trump. Bernie knows that.

When Bernie first accepted support from Tulsi she was just recently resigned from having been a National Democratic Party Vice Chairwomen. She wasn't put into that national leadership position by insurgent forces within the Democratic Party. She was actually, and in hindsight mistakenly, being groomed for Democratic Party leadership. Probably the fact that Tulsi was a high profile War Vet clouded some mainstream thinking at the time.

I don’t think we will ever find out though. Sanders won’t be the nominee.

...

Sid

nt

Personally I have been volunteering and following this campaign for a while and I don't see all that many influencing policies. Especially when Sanders' positions haven't' changed in 40 years for the most part.

He has also made it a point to have women and people of color in his campaign too. Because he wants those people to also vote for him.

This is what a candidate is supposed to do. Indeed, it is EXACTLY what is supposed to happen with third parties. When they become a threat to the voting block of a party, that party works to make itself more appealing to those their party voters.

that I have a problem with, and believe was a major contributor to the drop off of D votes that caused us to lose.

The issue now is that a "Democratic Party" candidate has hired and refuses to rein in, prominent avowed anti-Democratic nominee mouthpieces for key staff positions.

I have no problem with the average Green Party voter until they play that "not a dime's worth of difference" bullshit. Yeah if we can con them to vote for us, great, but if they truly believe there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats, then there are probably other potential voters that are easier for us to engage and more likely to ACTUALLY vote for our candidate in November when they are casting their secret ballot.

On a side note: we need to change our voting system away from plurality (aka "first past the post" ) to a ranked-choice type of system. But that's not the rules we have today and anyone who doesn't understand that, needs education on that topic. Some will learn by experience, some will never learn. How does that Rush song go? "if you refuse to decide, you still have made a choice" << voting 3rd party in our current system, is refusing to decide. And it is still making a choice. (In a swing state. The numbers are too low to be affected by 3rd party votes in non-swing states. But the vocal attacks on our candidate matter, from whatever state they come.)

Thanks for the thread Tom Rinaldo.

period.. forever.

This ALONE gives me full vindication and justification:


I say again FUCK all 2016 Green Party supporters, and fuck their opinions as it applies to 2020.

their Democratiic candidate

A mindset like that cannot be relied on or trusted, and cannot discriminate the far greater danger a trump second term would bring

Why cater to that garbage. There are plenty of Democrats, and independents who don't setup false equivalencies between Democrats and republicans who KNOW THE DIFFERENCE

At the minimum the SC

Sorry, but these green party apologists who refused to vote for the Democratic nominee in 2016 and according to the latest polls will do the same thing if the Democratic nominee is not their choice in 2020 are not our allies, and should not be trusted. In fact they will play their same blackmail game, either their candidate preference or we won't vote Democratic

F**k that bullshit

those who show up and vote for a third or fourth party.

Better to use the energy on getting them to vote Democratic and third party voters to vote
Democratic than to waste it on alienating them.

Frankly I don’t care about their votes one way or another. They rarely get it right anyway.

But I can't even begin to count how often DU members have pointed out that the number of Stein voters in various key states in 2016 exceeded the margin by which Trump defeated Clinton in those states thus, in their words, "handing Trump the victory" in the electoral college.

You may not care, but a whole lot of other people have expressed outrage over the choice that Green voters made in 2016 literally blaming that choice for Trump's presidency.

That’s how it typically is with low info voters, or voters who are so strident in their beliefs, anyone who disagrees is offensive. That’s the Green Party.

But whether or not you think their views are rational, or that the basis for their loyalties has any basis in rational decision making, it none the less is true that at least one and possibly two or more of our potential candidates can win a substantial number of votes that went Green last time.

In 2012 Jill Stein won almost 400,000 votes. That might be considered a baseline for core Green voters. In 2016 Jill Stein won 1,457,218 votes, over a million more than she won 4 years earlier. I think who the Democrats run in 2020 can entirely or in large part potentially reverse the one million vote gain, over a 300% increase, that Stein made in four years.

For better or for worse there are many low info voters supporting all of our major political parties, but their votes carry the same individual weight as that of a hard core political junky well versed on all of the candidates and all of the issues.

"It's a Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum vote"

Fuck the Green Party

When one of the two political parties feels that a third party is taking votes away from them, that party is supposed to reach out and even change itself to get those third party voters. Much of the platform of the Democratic party since at least FDR was because the Democrats wanted those third party voters.

It would be different if this was compromising principals. But the greenies are being attracted by Sanders policies, which I remind you a great many Democrats also agree with.