Jill Stein looped into widening investigation of Russia and Trump Jr. connections

[Jim Lane]

163. I don't think Stein personally will change her mind BUT...

We can and should be thinking about how to win back some of the people who voted Green.

I'm sure some DUers would immediately dismiss this as hopeless. I invite them to consider Ralph Nader. In 2000, as in 2016, there had been a Democrat in the White House for eight years. People had gotten complacent. They forgot how bad Republicans can be. In each case, the Green Party candidate exploited that and did much better than s/he had four years earlier.

Four years of Bush proved very instructive. When Nader ran again in 2004, his vote dropped by about three-fourths. Even his 2000 running mate, Winona LaDuke, abandoned him and the Green Party and endorsed John Kerry. We can realistically hope for a similar effect in 2020. When it comes to driving voters away from the Green Party, Trump is likely to outdo even Bush.

We should capitalize on that. You say we should build progressive unity, and I interpret that as meaning that we should try to win (or win back) some of the voters who went Green this time.

As a tactical matter, I don't see personal attacks on Jill Stein as the most effective way to do that. Discrediting one individual won't make the Green Party go away. Someone else will eagerly step forward to be the nominee in 2020. We should instead point out the enormous human cost of Republican electoral success. Stein went from 0.36% of the vote in 2012 to 1.07% in 2016, so most of her voters were not hard-core Greens. Many of them, like the Nader voters of 2000, may be induced to back a Democrat.