Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, "how was the play"? I would like to thank Jill Stein, Susan Sarandon,

[Jim Lane]

152. I don't see that much difference between 2000 and 2016

My evidence, like yours, is essentially anecdotal, but, FWIW, here goes....

Neither the Nader voters nor the Stein voters were a monolith. Each group had a mixture of reasoning and motive. I think that each group included some people in each of these categories:

* People who objected on principle to voting for a candidate with whom they had significant disagreements.
* People who minimized the differences between the two major parties (ironically, the same pitch made by George Wallace in 1968).
* People in non-swing states who thought their state was in the bag for one party anyway, and so voted to send a message (or to help the Greens get to 5% for federal funding) rather than to affect the outcome.
* People who actively wanted the Democratic candidate to lose because that way the Democratic Party would be forced to move left to re-attract disgruntled progressives.

(Side note to the reading-impaired crowd: I voted for Gore, I voted for Clinton, I am not endorsing any of the above viewpoints, and I am not urging a vote against a Democratic candidate. I'm simply trying to understand why a significant number of generally left-leaning people made the wrong decision.)

I couldn't venture to say whether the mix among these groups was significantly different as between Nader and Stein. The only thing that's clear to me is that Nader got a lot of votes because of his name recognition and his well-deserved reputation as a consumer advocate, which is a big reason he did so much better than Stein did.

A key factor is that both these races -- the two elections in which the Green Party candidate did significantly better than in any other presidential election in the party's history -- came after eight years of a Democrat in the White House. I think people got complacent. Especially with regard to the second group, those who minimized the differences between the two major parties, it was easier to believe that baloney when there was no recent history of a Republican as President.

This will be important in 2020. The Stein voters in the first two groups I listed above will have the same experience as the Nader voters did from 2000 to 2004: four years of Republican misrule, with horrific consequences for the country.

The effect of this experience in 2004 was that Nader lost about three-fourths of his previous support. In 2020, although there will be some Green Party diehards of the type you describe, it's reasonable for us to hope that a lot of them will repent. This is why I disagree with the DUers whose preferred approach to this bloc is to scream invective at them at every opportunity. Some of them can be won over, but not that way.

And, no, winning over some Stein voters doesn't mean we have to abandon other campaign efforts. I favor an "all of the above" strategy. There are Obama-Trump voters who can be won over, there are people who sat out the 2016 election who can be won over, there are young people and other new voters to be registered, etc. Heck, I'd include going after the McMullin voters. That's more than 700,000 votes for a candidate who was on the ballot in only eleven states. I think most of them are traditional Republicans who were appalled by the prospect of Trump, and who are unlikely to have been mollified by his performance in office. If he's the GOP candidate in 2020 (which of course isn't certain), some of them might be ready to vote to oust him instead of just casting a protest vote.