It would be nice if the far left, for once, did some introspection.

[bekkilyn]

213. You're still giving them too much power

The Green party is NOTHING other than maybe a protest vote. They have no power and no real influence. Most of the people who voted for them were Democrats or Independents who were just voting because they didn't like Hillary, but have no real clue what social or economic policies the Green party even proposes. (Yes, *some* do but not very many) Had there been no green party, those same people would have voted for any other 3rd party that was out there, whether the party was considered progressive or not.

Some of the people voting Green may have even been conservative Republicans who just didn't like 45, and since they couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hillary, voted Green or Libertarian because they knew it was a "safe" vote and that neither of those parties would win. We wouldn't have had their votes anyway.

Nevertheless, they were still a very, very insignificant amount of people and not really worth the time and energy to get all worked up over them. I think they might have gotten a total of 1 electoral vote and weren't even on the ballot in all 50 states.

There is also too much emphasis here on the presidential election. Green party has practically no significance anywhere and yet we would do much better to put our main focus on state and local elections than keep giving most of our attention to the presidential election. If we had control of the rest of the country, 45 would have very little power even if somehow the Greens were responsible for electing him into office, though I don't at all believe that's the case. Again, giving them too much power.

Consistently give people good, likable candidates with integrity and strength for us to vote *for* and people will vote for them. Maybe not at first because they don't currently trust the Democratic party anymore in a lot of states, but if we start consistently doing what we say we are going to do and unapologetically support the social and economic policies we say we are going to support, it will change. If we move forward with real integrity, GOP propaganda won't be able to easily stand up to it, so we really need to stop compromising ourselves. It turns people off big time.

Nobody cares about the Greens other than as as protest tool and even that's an insignificant number. Why waste time and energy on them at the cost of supporting candidates who are going to *actively* push for the social and economic policies we want? That this entire *country* wants? And if the people who are supposed to represent us aren't doing this (their jobs), then we get rid of them and replace them with people who will do it.

The Democratic party has some real opportunities here and I really hope we don't waste it.