AOC is right: Jill Stein’s campaign is not serious
AOC is right: Jill Stein’s campaign is not serious
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently made headlines for calling perennial Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein “predatory” and “not serious.” AOC is right.
Giving voters more choices is a good thing for democracy. But third-party politics isn’t performance art. It’s hard work — which Stein is not doing. As AOC observed: “[When] all you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you're just showing up once every four years to do that, you're not serious.”
To be clear: AOC was not critiquing third parties as a whole, or the idea that we need more choices in our democracy. In fact, AOC specifically cited the Working Families Party as an example of an effective third party. The organization I lead, MoveOn, supports their 365-day-a-year efforts to build power for a pro-voter, multi-party system. And I understand third parties’ power to activate voters hungry for alternatives: I myself volunteered for Ralph Nader in 2000, and that experience helped shape my lifelong commitment to people-first politics.
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Jill Stein is a russian asset
Supporting evidence for the 3 downvotes ATM:
Putin’s Shill Stein wants Nato disbanded, the US to give up their SC veto, and revoke weapons to help Ukraine defend itself while simultaneously forcing ‘peace’ (subjugation) negotiations with russia.
More context:
- Emir Kusturica is a propagandist filmmaker quoted as saying "if I was Russian I would vote for him". He also supports Russian annexation of Crimea.
- Willy Wimmer was a Right-wing German politician who in his retirement has effectively become a far-right conspiracy theorist that regularly posts to the Epoch Times.
For those that don’t understand how the Electoral College + FPTP voting works, voting for her means helping donald become president due to the spoiler effect.
Just missing Lavrov and you'd have all four horsemen in the same pictureNvm i mistook Ivanov for Medvedev, only two horsemen at this table with Jill Stein
They are rigged and corrupted for sure just like every popular politician but let's not forget that NATO is a terroristic organization and that producing or sending cluster munition to an authoritarian government is not a good thing.
We should take everyone into account for chilling with russian leaders and mafiosi not just jill stein
I agree. The only time I hear her name is around election time. It’s too late then, the work needs to be done in between.
The way she, her party, and her campaign conduct themselves make it hard to avoid the conclusion that she’s running purely as a Democratic spoiler candidate (that is, with the intent of siphoning support away from the Democratic candidate).
Edit: to be clear, I am a staunch supporter of environmentalist causes in general. I just don’t believe the Green Party actually is an environmentalist cause at the end of the day. I judge these things by actions, not by policy documents.
Yeah environmental causes have a lot that can and must be done at the local level. I’m a staunch environmentalist, it’s my primary issue, and it’s why I’m angry at my local government. I wish we had a good third party because the election is decided in the democratic primaries. Get someone running on improving public transit, forcing all apartments to offer recycling (mostly concerned about glass and metal), improving bicycle infrastructure… But funnily enough the greens don’t seem to give two shits about that easy picking.
Especially using the name and clout to help the local races which are run more often. Get third parties well known regionally with serious candidates, you'll see demand for them grow nationally.
And some of these local places could use some good faith environmentalism. Co-opting the environmental cause to act purely as a spoiler is going to have consequences for hundreds of years in the US. Could you imagine if Ohio had had good faith green party elected officials raising a ruckus after the train de-railed? or the difference in Flint if there had been anyone there to say, hey wait a minute, that's not how water works!
Instead we're building more highway lanes, farming the deserts, and looking the other way as corporations make people homeless. (Humans are horrible at living with the land, it's not just homeless people. Check out any tourist camping area by the end of September.) That's what really pisses me off.
Just because you don't hear her name doesn't mean she isn't putting in the work
It just implies it.
The records of what she does, and the performative activism, which takes place entirely and exclusively during presidential election years - that's what shows she isn't putting in the work.
After repeatedly losing in Mass, the only time she runs for anything is for presidential elections. This also demonstrates she isn't putting in the work, or she would have more involvement in more local elections.
These third party types always claim that they want to reform the system. That's bullshit. If you want to reform this system then you need to start at the bottom. You need to recruit candidates and invest in winning at local and state level first. Those are the most winnable offices for an outsider/independent. Hell, win a few critical states and you can get enough states in the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which, while not an ideal solution, would be a good first step in reforming the system.
Once you have some power and recognition at the state level, you need to aim for Congress. Start winning seats in the House and Senate and you can really start making change. That is where the real power of change resides. How many times have we seen a president with a divided House and/or Senate have their policy goals effectively neutered by legislative antagonism? Without support from the House and Senate, a 3rd party president would be powerless.
Stein cannot possibly enact positive change even if there were a literal miracle and she became president. The only thing, literally the only thing she can do by running for President is get Trump elected.
Without support from the House and Senate, a 3rd party president would be powerless.
Or consider it from the other direction. In a party line vote on new policy, imagine if the difference was a couple green or progressive congressmen instead of the Manchins of the world
If only they would run for Congress rather than screwing around every four years and knocking over the table.
Fully agree.
My take as of late is that any 3rd party candidate who runs in our two party system can't possibly be serious. They make a huge show, maybe get a message out, but almost always torpedo the party closest to them.
With the Stein's and RFKs in the news, it's all sexy flashy publicity without any serious effort to have a 3rd party win.
That said, there is another 3rd party personality that you might not have heard of in a while: Andrew Yang.
I actually believe he is serious about electoral reform, in fact that's the one issue his Forward Party is about. He and his team have worked quietly to help get ranked choice vote in local elections. He is not running for president as a spoiler candidate. He is not running for senate as an independent. He is putting in the work along with fairvote.org to make the structural changes needed to have viable 3rd party campaigns. We saw what happened in Alaska when ranked choice vote was present- they kept Sarah Palin from holding a Senate seat and elected a Democrat instead.
If we had the NPVIC and ranked choice vote, our democracy would be much more representative, collaborative, and stable.
Yeah, if the greens succeeded at things I might consider voting for them. As it stands I don’t like the democrats but when they do well I get some of what I want. The more votes the greens get the less I get of what I want. I’d love to see a state with a green-dem coalition doing big things to demonstrate that they can actually govern as opposed to just run for office, and not even do that well.
AOC has not managed to enact the change she promised from within.
She's actually been fairly effective for a new congressman. But in order to get meaningful change she needs both position and allies in congress. She has a number of allies (AKA The Squad) but because Congress is so full of old fucks, getting a position in a committee with any power at all is difficult at best.
Meanwhile Jill Stein goes on TV, snipes at the democratic party and collects paychecks, all while eroding the party's position all for literally no benefit whatsoever. The Green Party has been the single most ineffective third party in the history of the country. The only thing they've accomplished is siphoning off votes from Democrat presidential candidates and getting Republicans elected.
Because it's literally not a solution. The absolute best case scenario is causing the closest ideological party to fail for many elections in a row before it disintegrates and reforms in the third party, which is now the second party in a two party system and filled with many of the same politicians and beholden to most of the same voters.
Voting reform is the solution for everyone complaining about the two party system. Get ranked choice and leftier challengers who actually care about the results of elections will run against establishment politicians more often.
pol sci 101: fragile fptp systems (like the electoral college) tend to result in two parties.
First it needs to be viable:
AOC is correct indeed.
If Left-Wing Third Parties are serious, they will start by running their candidates as spoilers in the Democratic Primary and appealing to voters to listen and add their platforms to the list of priorities to push the Dems on. They'd simultaneously work hard to get Ranked Choice passed nation-wide as that system is the most compatible with our country's political system. Once they get that passed, they would join efforts to reform the Electoral College so it doesn't require 270 votes, an then implement a more effective voting system for President that ensures that left-wing voters don't get a Right-Wing president elected voting for Third Party options. They would also push hard to win at the City, County, and State levels, as well as in the Congress, so the Jill Steins of the world have friendly legislators to rely on.
Ocasio-Cortez is right to call this out.
Honestly, yes. You can't vote third party, and you can't not vote, if you don't want Trump in office. If you vote Third Party or stay home, you're good with Trump being in office, which means you're good with leaving minorities, non-Christians, transgendered people, and gay people up Project 2025 Shit Creek without a paddle. Given my wife is a Black bisexual Goth pagan, that means you want my wife to be hurt, and that pisses me the fuck off. And judging from the 15 other downvotes you have, I'm not the only one who feels that way.
How long has stein been campaigning and didn't know basic information about Congress.
She's either not serious, an imbecile, or porque no los dos?
That means why not both, Jill.
Go watch her breakfast club interview. So transparent that they are pandering with hollow buzz word mention. The hosts call her out pretty well. If they are real about an issue like ranked choice voting, then I want to see you become the face of that issue publicly for the next 4 years, until it's passed into law through consensus and politicking, in a way that the green party clearly earns a place in a tangible victory.
You won't, that's not what you're being funded for, but that's what you'd do if you actually cared.
I made the mistake of voting for her in the primaries exactly once years ago as a naive teenager, and vowed never again once her "campaigning" expounded on what she actually stood for and how.
Green party... Plastic green, indeed.
Howie Hawkins was nice though (doesn't mean I would have voted for him)
Stein is a clown.
A vote for stein is a vote for trump.
A vote for stein is a vote for trump.
no, it's not. this is election misinformation
It absolutely is when you look at the reality of the situation. Stop spreading the 3rd party vote as a viable option misinformation. Where are these so-called 3rd party candidates in the local elections? With no local support, state assembly level, or Congress, these candidates would be useless as President.
A vote for the green party is a vote for the green party. Stop trying to bend logic
Normally I'd agree with you. But the Green party is rather transparently not actually trying to get elected. They have the same level of seriousness as RFK who publicly stated he'll only keep his name on the ballot in states where it helps Trump.
If a third party did the leg work, spent a decade getting people elected to congress in every state, and then showed up in the presidential elections I'd be all for it. and before you whine about convenience, I've been saying the same thing to Libertarians and Greens for 2 decades now. They either aren't serious, or they're incompetent.
It's pretty much completely impossible for a third party candidate to ever win. You have to get 270 (just over half) of all the electoral votes. If any third party made a huge amount of headway it'd still be almost impossible to take enough votes from the repubs or democrats to hit 270, and anything less than 270 means the House gets to decide who becomes president. Obviously, the house filled with democrats and Republicans, would never select the third party candidate.
They dont have to win, just steal enough votes from one of the other parties to affect the election
Correct. I'm pointing out the complete futility of anything other than that.
<astronaut gun meme>
It never was.
Yeah, I feel like a serious candidate for president would know how many Representatives are in the House.
I'm commenting this a few times, but Alaska has implemented ranked choice, has a number of environmentalists and does outsized damage to the environment. If they were serious they'd run in state elections there, and four congress there. They are not.
At her peak, Jill Stein broke just above 1%.
First past the post duopolies are not serious democracies.
Neither are dictatorships though, that's the problem. Now is not the time to be fighting the "but it would be better if there were more parties" fight.
Why would anyone vote 3rd party? They can just stay home and continue their nap.
Because to some their eternal purity is way more important than anything that could actually happen as a result of their actions. To throw your vote away in a protest that no party has ever cared about keeps your hands clean of any individual aspect of that party you don't like and you can claim the moral high ground by "trying" to enact change, but at what cost to everything around you?
It's like the cartoon of the people living in a cave after climate change ruins everything saying "at least for a short time we made a lot of money for shareholders." except it would be "at least I didn't vote for Genocide Joe."
Because y'all claim to live in a democracy, so let people voice their opinions as votes.
EDIT: Lmao, look at the downvoted. HOW DARE PEOPLE VOTE FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT I WANT
Exactly this. That woman is always vapor until an election year.
John Oliver convinced me that Jill Stein is a dumbfuck back in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3O01EfM5fU
Yeah i bet she wont even try to get elected next year
She will, if she gets money from Daddy P specifically earmarked for it.
For those who don't get the joke: the election is this year and it is held every four years, so Stein isn't going to run for election next year because she wouldn't run for an election that a) is already over or b) isn't being held yet and is several years in the future.
What I want to know how they can they perform when you don't let them at debates? As I said before, they didn't allow people within their own party to debate such as Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich for not having enough money, I don't see what the purpose of the party is.
If they had representatives in the house they could push their right to speak at debates. Senators even more so. Give them 5 senators and 21 representatives, that’s 5% of the legislature rounding generously, and then when they can’t speak at debates it’s something the two major parties should be ashamed of. As it stands now, people care about the parties that can win elections and I’m sorry but the Green Party doesn’t win elections, neither does the libertarian party, the constitution party, or the communist party. The greens and libertarians have both had moments of glory in which case they won the election for the major party they most disagreed with. And that’s coming from a fan of Nader, I think he did amazing work with the department of transportation.
The debates define rules ensuring only serious candidates join the debate - third parties need enough votes to be in the race. I’m aware that I’m letting them off the hook, but I don’t know a better solution. While it would be better to include third party candidates, we also don’t want many non-serious ones
Kucinich and Gravel? Dude, what year do you think it is?
There's not much to go on since there's been 2 Democratic Party debates since 2008. Gravel was a 2020 Presidential candidate.
This is a lot of reading for so early in the morning. I’ll wait for the Jon Oliver expose on her. His RFK episode didn’t disappoint.
One thing i have come to realize about most politically active people is that facts dont matter enough to affect a vote.
Is this just 3rd party ad-lib hate? General voters hate? or Jill stein enthusiasts hate? Just seems like the most generic bot comment for upvotes without actually saying anything.
Neither is trumps but he gets all the airtime
Even if Jill was elected, all she has is ablism and transphobia
So she's running hard mode Republican?
Yes
🔫👩🚀 "Never was."
Our of curiosity, and because I couldn't immediately find anything. Is MoveOn actively trying to change the voting system itself?
Also AOC('s party): "wE'rE wOrkInG tiRElessLy on a CeaSefiRe dEAL..." sends $20B in arms to Israel
Since the start of Israel's war with Hamason October 7, 2023, the United States has enacted legislation providing at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel, which includes $3.8 billion from a bill in March 2024 (in line with the current MOU) and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriations act in April 2024. source
She should change to democrat so people start taking her seriously and unceremoniously dump her vulture ass along a lonely highway
So glad that AOC is really dealing with the issues that matter...
Stein syphons off votes from the dems, AOC calling her out on her bullshit does kind of matter in context.
Jill Stein is there so that people who want to vote, but are mad as fuck at the dems, have someone to vote for. Basically, she's there to scare the dems (working, obviously). Will they be scared enough to adopt some better policies, and get those votes?
The spoiler effect is based on geometric proximity, not the quality of policy. They're a waste of a vote, because they have no chance of winning.
If the greens want to do something they should work at the local level where they actually have a chance.
Salon - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Salon:
MBFC: Left - Credibility: Medium - Factual Reporting: Mixed - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
https://www.salon.com/2024/09/16/aoc-is-right-jill-steins-campaign-is-not-serious/
Bernie Sanders was not able to change the system from the inside after spending his entire life compromising with Democrats. It is hard to take these "progressive" Democrats seriously.
Let me quote just one line from the Wikipedia entry
Sanders is credited with influencing a leftward shift in the Democratic Party after his 2016 presidential campaign
You can also look at his legislative history to see that he’s been pretty successful pulling progressive Democrats along, regardless of not changing the electoral system or getting nominated
Can I get some examples or what he "shifted left"? I honestly don't even understand what that means anymore in the US political environment. Rights? Healthcare? Basic competent legislation that isn't banning or removing something?
I don't consider right-wing "conservative" anymore with the whole immigration/border and increased law-enforcement funding that would be needed for all their draconian ideals. "Progressive" is just trying to catch up to the rest of the world at this point that's leaving us in the dust while we argue about the same shit for 100 more years. (sorry rant over)
I followed your advice and looked at his legislation since 2016 (link 1,2), what am I looking for? I see a new "national heritage area" (another national park designation for some reason), dropping methane regulations deemed necessary from the EPA (uk is doing fine with it). Maybe I should be looking at only introduced legislation for a better picture, not what's past?
Bernie Sanders would have been president in 2016 if it was possible to change the party from the inside. There is a shift to the right in the Democratic party. Not to the left.
I’m planning on voting for the party for socialism and liberation in November and you can too!
They’re running Claudia de la Cruz on a platform of Palestinian statehood and an end to arms shipments to Israel.
The post-Nader Green Party is a joke, but the DNC is the party of Reagan and Cheney, so... Those in glass political parties that serve only to undermine the left electorate's political power shouldn't throw stones
This thread is sitting on the front page of Lemmy for a while now so I'll share my thoughts.
I will only ever vote for a 3rd party. I made that promise to myself after 2016, so I don't really care if people think that means it's effectively a vote for Trump. Because I wasn't going to vote for the Democrats anyways.
A slow slip into facism doesn't appeal to me.
This behaviour of yours is more likely to cause a fast slip to fascism.
AOC called out Jill Stein for tanking in 2020. But Stein did not even run in 2020. Who is the embarrassment here?
2016, not 2020
AOC stated Stein ran in 2020 and dropped in the polls which is why people should not take Jill Stein seriously. But Howie Hawkins ran in 2020.
If your campaign depends on people who vote for Jill Stein, there's something wrong with it and you should fix it
Sounds like the Stein campaign is in deep shit then.
Yeah, I don't think she's gonna take the crown fellas
Unfortunately the Democrat, and Republican parties, are both Traitors to the Republic. As much as I've liked her positions on issues I care about. AOC needs to sit down and shut up. She's in a party of Traitors.
This person is member of a party supporting a genocide
Every republican who voted to send weapons to Israel is complicit as well.
Mmhmm. So is every member of the Republican Party. Even worse, they have promised to increase hostility and support. Now, I ask you, and all the other parrots: What do you feel we should do about it that does not involve potentially giving the Republican Party control of the very thing you're verbalizing so hard to stand up for?
Ding ding! Wow had to scroll further than I expected to reach the compulsory genocide comment.
It's lost all meaning at this point, really. It's just something to call someone they disagree with.
AOC is not serious. She went to the border to see the conditions under trump and cry on camera but never went back to see if conditions were still bad under biden. She doesn't care about border conditions it was just a partisan stunt.
She's clearly running defense for kamala by ridiculously claiming that kamala is "working tirelessly" for a ceasefire in gaza.
Jill Stein and the green party do not "just show up" every 4 years, they are always putting in the work but they only get media attention once every 4 years because there's a presidential election.
Well yeah. The border problem isn’t really her first issue. She you know represents New York..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_policy_of_the_United_States
"The United States Congress has authority over immigration policy in the United States"
It was a big issue for her when trump was in office but once biden got in there she dropped it immediately
(all of these are dated post April 2021)
https://people.com/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-says-border-conditions-barbaric-and-wrong/
https://www.newsweek.com/alexandra-ocasio-cortez-warning-joe-biden-border-1872427
https://www.thecut.com/2021/04/aoc-decries-horrifying-conditions-at-the-border.html
https://www.newsweek.com/aoc-slams-joe-biden-cruel-decision-border-wall-1832543
edit: if you downvote please explain why
