Party loyalty is a means of control. I vote for those who will represent me, period.

[joshcryer]

242. I was giving an example.

I wasn't saying it was currently possible (that the greens could get 5% of the vote). In reality the American people are done with the petty third party or no vote crap since Gore had his election stolen.

But if we had another Nader, someone who could get that kind of third party advocacy, then it would weaken the party for supporters of our candidates to say "go ahead, don't vote just because the state is safe."

"The state is safe" is not a reason to not vote or to vote third party, period. It's just throwing away the vote. Gary Johnson got 3x the vote of Stein... the Libertarians still didn't break the 1% barrier, much less the 5% barrier.

If Sanders wins the nomination there'll still be that silly .2% of Greens and .5% of Libertarians who would vote for their candidates.

edit: you seem to not be aware of the Green vs Democrat vote exchanges that were going on in 2000. People in "safe states" were pledging to vote for Nader in exchange for people to pledge to vote for Gore in "unsafe states." It was extremely crazy at the time.