Yes, in 2000, if everyone who voted for Nader had instead voted for Gore, then Gore would have become President. The Democratic Party noticed that and realized that it had to completely re-invent itself. Running a candidate who got almost 51 million votes, more than anyone else in the race, wasn't the way to go. Instead, it had to look to the candidate who got about 3 million votes and give his supporters everything they wanted. That's why the 2000 election produced a fundamental transformation of the American political system.
Except, of course, that it didn't.
The fact is that Gore was roughly representative of the center of gravity of the Democratic Party. If Nader had run in the Democratic primaries, he would've gotten more votes than he got in the general election, but he still would've lost.
It just makes no sense to suggest that progressives can extort compliance from the majority of the party by threatening to stomp off and vote third-party. We know from experience that such a strategy simply WILL NOT influence how millions of Democrats vote in the primaries, and WILL NOT influence the choice of the Democratic nominee.
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