2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein offers ‘collaboration’ with Bernie Sanders [View all]dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)I was suggesting it is a tool for leverage that Bernie has in the superdelegate situation.
But, since you asked, how would such a 3rd party run impact the campaign? It's not entirely predictable. Trump and Hillary are unusually positioned, issues-wise, compared to the usual Democratic-Republican postions. Trump would hit hard and often at Hillary for dishonesty and indebtedness to corporate donors. Trump is immune to the donor issue, well I'm no expert on his funding, he may have more corporate money behind him than I realize, nowhere near what Hillary takes in though, and he'd make a big deal about it.
Bernie would trump them both on integrity and authenticity. He'd have to overcome the red-baiting from both of them, and a ton of trash the donor class woud throw at him. So far he seems pretty resilient, I believe the authenticity protects him from a lot of it.
Hillary would be the most corporate candidate of the three, hard to say how that spins out in this climate. She has tremendous brand recognition, which is both good and bad for her. There are a lot of people who, given two equal choices, would love to vote for a woman (I am such a person), but most seem to decide primarily on other issues, such as who they think will fight for their interests.
I love the Greens and their platform, always have. I have never found them to be good at large-scale campaigns and mobilization, they tend to splinter off into niche politics. Bernie's a unique candidate, so that could change.
Anyway, I wouldn't assume a green run from Bernie would disproportionately hurt Hillary, he'd take a lot from Trump, there's a lot of no-more-business-as-usual commonality between those camps, even if they differ in their response to that sentiment.
But what I really don't see, is the superdelegates behaving towards Bernie in a way similar to how they switched to Obama. Obama was much more of an acceptable establishment candidate to such people. So, if Bernie closes the elected delegate gap, I think he'll need something over the heads of the party to get any kind of fair treatment.
Do you have any better suggestions as to how he could get the superdelegates to respect the popular vote? There may well be a better way.