Reply #272: "In all likelihood, he's never gonna run again."

[BzaDem]

That's what people said in 2004 and 2008. I'll believe it when I see it.

"Unless you're specifically talking about the Electoral College"

Electoral college is key. In the electoral college, even if a third party candidate comes in first place with 269 electoral votes (with the D and the R getting around 100ish each), the vote goes to the House (with each state getting one vote), and the R wins.

"Instant Runoff Voting can be done on a local, state, or federal level."

It cannot be done at the federal level for Presidential elections, since the Constitution gives plenary authority to state legislatures to determine how to select presidential electors. (They don't even need to have elections.)

So it has to be done at the state level. I would be happy if the state parties take on that issue, but that has nothing to do with the federal party (at the Presidential level or any other level). That is a separate, parallel track.

"What you can get is a change in the political culture in which activists and rank and file voters(especially the poor, the Rainbow, and labor) are treated as being just as important as Beltway insiders or big donors."

We have a primary process, where the groups you mention are ESSENTIAL to get the nomination. No one can win the nomination without those groups.

The truth is, we had an open primary. We had candidates as far left as Kucinich. We had a primary system that is incredibly tilted towards the most politically active in the party (caucuses), which gives a huge amount of power to the base. All the candidates competed for labor votes, LGBT votes, and the votes of the poor. Obama (who emphasized bipartisanship at every event, emphasized his wish to escalate in Afghanistan, emphasized his interest to look "forward, not backward," etc) won the primary.

At that point, if the party doesn't unite behind the candidate backed by a majority of the party, the Republicans win. Always, without exception. This means the only way to advance progressive policy is if the party ALWAYS unites behind the winner. This is true when the winner is moderate, and it is true when the winner is liberal.