2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Please DON'T CALL Hillary A Progressive [View all]cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... you'd know that he has no plans to do that. He, Thom Hartmann, and many others realize that if you want to launch a real presidential campaign with a lot of support for it, and not just a symbolic Green Party candidacy that doesn't get a lot of attention or any chance at winning, that he has to go the route of running in the primary.
Until there's tangible evidence, which there is absolutely NOT, that he would run as a third party, then don't make him out to be the spoiler that he's not. He's not going to try and become the beacon of hate to our flawed system like Nader was, whether you like it or not. If you really are worried about third party candidacies that many of us don't think are going to happen this time around, you should push for instant runoff voting, which would eliminate a liberal independent or third party candidate splitting votes with a Democrat of a majority of American votes to put in place a Republican with only a plurality of support.
It's interesting that more Republicans don't demonize Perot for allowing Clinton to win the presidency with a plurality of the vote then too. Though Perot's votes might have gone to either Republicans or Democrats in that instance, if either party had stood against NAFTA then, I could see how many Republicans might interpret Perot as getting in the way of a Bush senior win then.