The committee has largely kept quiet about the Green party nominee. But that’s now changing.
“Jill Stein is a useful idiot for Russia. After parroting Kremlin talking points and being propped up by bad actors in 2016 she’s at it again,” DNC spokesman Matt Corridoni said in a statement to The Bulwark. “Jill Stein won’t become president, but her spoiler candidacy—that both the GOP and Putin have previously shown interest in—can help decide who wins. A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump.”
"Hasan later asked Stein why she had labeled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal, but not Putin.
"Well, as John F. Kennedy said, we must not negotiate out of fear and we must not fear to negotiate," she replied. "So, if you want to be an effective world leader, you don't start by name-calling and hurling epithets."
"So, how will President Stein negotiate with Israel then if you've called Netanyahu a war criminal?" Hasan asked in response.
"Well, because he very clearly is a war criminal," Stein said, prompting Hasan to ask: "So Putin clearly isn't a war criminal?"
"Well, we don't have a decision—put it this way—by the International Criminal Court," Stein said.
The ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Putin, alleging that he is responsible for war crimes. No such warrant has been issued for Netanyahu, whose war on Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians. However, the chief prosecutor of the ICC has applied for an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister.
"There's an arrest warrant for Putin and there isn't an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, so why is Putin not a war criminal, but Netanyahu is?" Hasan asked.
"Yeah. Well, let me say this. We are sponsoring that war. We are sponsoring Netanyahu," Stein responded. "He is our dog in this fight. That is why we have a responsibility to pull him back.""
And anyone paying attention realizes she only put out the statement after she got called on it and had time to think about what it meant that she was actively avoiding doing so. This is 100% optics and nothing more.
Her statement is about as believable as a kid with crumbs on their face saying they didn't eat all the cookies....
Way too little, way too late. Medhi cut her up so surgically I don't even know if she's gonna have the stones to resurface four years from now. Hopefully being a Russian asset pays well, Shill is done
That being said, she's so ill informed that she didn't know how many House Reps there are. Of course she wouldn't have known about the ICC arrest warrant for Putin until a reporter told her so she could look it up.
If anything, if he's "our dog" as she says, doesn't that mean he's just a tool rather than a war criminal?
Why is this interesting? Here's another point of view, one that's a bit more consistent. Israel, while not being a member of NATO, has a special relationship with it and is basically a major defacto ally.
If you are pro-(Putin's) Russia and believe NATO's actions are war crimes, then it's no leap at all to consider Israel in the same group. In fact, hurting Israel (the country) then benefits Russia as it weakens NATO (by weakening a close ally of theirs).
LOL, that just proves his point. I read the transcript, and Stein had every opportunity to clearly and definitively repudiate Putin. Not only did she refuse to do so, she continues to refuse, dishonestly misrepresents being called out on her bad faith as a "misunderstanding," and doubles down with bullshit "both sides"ism.
In fact, that press release has sealed the deal on convincing me that she's a deeply unserious piece of shit and a Russian asset.
So congratulations troll farm vatniks, you've played yourselves.
I like how everyone who is aware of the terror America has caused all over the world is immediately a Russian asset.
I like that she has the balls to rightfully call our living current and past presidents war criminals. Not every american is so brainwashed.
And before you ask I'm voting Democrat. I like that Jill Stein is putting pressure on the Democrats, and I can't say I disagree with anything in the statement they released.
Probably because she was trying to make one point and the interviewer was trying to make another one.
The interviewer won rhetorically. I think it takes self awareness and humility for the green party to realize this mistake and immediately issue a clarification in plain words.
You actually cannot truthfully say that she has not called Putin a war criminal anymore, but that hasnt changed how people here are talking.
People need to ask themselves why the democrats would throw mud rather than debate policy with the green party. In my opinion, its shameful and makes me feel worse about likely voting democrat this November.
Just out of curiosity, do you think it would help her win the election if she did? She boycotted his speech in congress. She is treading a really thin line, and the only winning gambit seems to be keeping her messaging neutral until after the election. Rocking that boat right now gives the Republicans further ammunition to use against her, and will embolden Netanyahu to militarily escalate.
At the moment she can hide behind the veil of the current policy being driven exclusively by Biden rather than inserting herself in the middle of things, and therefore presenting additional leverage to her enemies. I don't like the situation, but I don't see how it was possible to play things any differently while still preserving a serious chance to win the election.
We normally see eye to eye on a lot of things, but in this case I think it is disengenuous to conflate the motivations of Jill Stein & Kamala Harris.
In addition, people act like she isn't also the acting VP during this campaign. It would be extraordinarily problematic for the VP to actively undermine the policy of the president with whom they are serving even if their own presidential policy would be significantly different.
I don’t think it would help Harris to call Netanyahu a war criminal. I understand the reasoning. But, to attack Stein for inconsistencies in an interview, which she has since corrected by releasing a statement, is hypocritical. If Harris isn’t willing to call Netanyahu a war criminal, because of the election, then how can it be possible to hold Stein to a different standard?
Because Stein has notthing to lose. She could easily take a stand on something like Netanyahu but it was pulling teeth to condemn Putin. When the stakes are so low she can make any statement she wants.
How do you know what she has to lose? If Russia funds her campaign, that would be something to lose. It’s still a double standard to criticize Stein and not Harris for the same actions.
Well we know for fact that she has a 0% path to the white house. At best she can influence the outcome of either Harris or Trump. So she can go around making loaded statements like calling Joe a war criminal because it doesn't matter now many votes she loses or gains. If Harris went around spewing nonsense out of her mouth like Stein her campaign would be over.
Well, I think for one thing because Jill Stein seemingly had nothing to lose in that interview with Mehdi. The whole thing just came off as weird to me, and clearly that sentiment was pretty widely shared. I just don't understand it I guess. If she had provided more context around her initial hesitancy perhaps I would feel differently.
I am also totally willing to admit that it is an intellectual double standard, but it isn't a strategic one because the outcome of Kamala Harris' speech has the ability to affect the outcome of this election in a huge way. I guess you could argue that Jill Stein's does too since she is potentially peeling votes from the Democrats, but if she was actually serious about affecting change she could be lobbying Kamala Harris for policy concessions behind the scenes instead of just virtue signaling.
Jill Stein in that Mehdi interview really gave off the same energy as Kim Iversen in her debate with Destiny yesterday. Neither one of them did much to counter the narrative that they were at best highly sympathetic to Russia, or at worst closeted Russian assets. It was all just really bizarre and extremely suspect....
We don’t know what her motivations are, we can only speculate. She may not want to anger Russia, because they fund her campaign. Much like Harris doesn’t want to anger AIPAC because they fund her campaign. Regardless, it’s still a double-standard.
Accusing an interlocutor of whataboutism can also in itself be manipulative and serve the motive of discrediting, as critical talking points can be used selectively and purposefully even as the starting point of the conversation.
"Yes we did condemn..." is not the same as "Yes, Putin is a war criminal."
The passive accusations run all through it.
"So, what we said about Putin was that his invasion of Ukraine is criminal. It's a criminal and murderous war,"
"Well, by implication, by implication," Stein said.
"In so many words, yes he is," Stein said. "If you want to pull him back, if you are a world leader, you don't begin your conversation by calling someone a war criminal."
Just FYI, somebody else already tried explaining all this to blazera and blazera was completely unreasonable about it. You're not going to get anything through their thick skull.
"If you say that someone has said something, but not in so many words, you mean that they said it or expressed it, but in a very indirect way."
Is he a war criminal?
"In so many words, yes he is."
"I'm not going to say he is, but he is."
Not the same thing as:
"Well, because he very clearly is a war criminal,"
(What she said about Netanyahu).
The comparison between what she's willing to say about Netanyahu and unwilling to say about Putin, in the same interview, to the same journalist, is striking.
This is the second time today this argument has happened. They aren't even trying anymore. You can quote anything and they will tell you that isn't what it means
The interviewer agreed with her twice about Netanyahu, yet they kept screaming he was defending Netanyahu
Ahahaha oh no the "office workers" are still all over here, their content usually just gets downvoted into being permanently hidden and they've stopped picking fights outside of their own posts.
Are you really trying to act like this is some big reveal? Dude, we know. We're the #1 target of the pro-US propaganda. We see it all the time. It's why we're pretty good at spotting other country's propaganda when we see it.
Individuals' perceptions and behaviors can be influenced by the implicit stereotypes they hold, even if they are sometimes unaware they hold such stereotypes.
their content usually just gets downvoted into being permanently hidden
At first I read this as something that existed at the post level, too. Man, I sometimes wish something like that existed - posts below a certain rating could just be hidden (like Slashdot, for instance).
Those MAGAs cosplaying as lefties will have an even harder time now that the Uncommitted group have said they cannot support Harris but Donald will be worse. The same as we have all be saying.
Not just Trump will be worse as some sort of abstract moral statement. Their statement is that Uncommitted voters should actively vote against Donald Trump no matter how inadequate Harris's statements and commitments have been.
and no. voting for harris does NOT make me "pro-genocide," no matter how much you wish it did.
have fun watching jill stein get a single digit percentage of the vote. if that. but don't feel like you accomplished something by throwing your vote away, because you didn't
Its not crazy to acknowledge that the current choices are genocide or genocide light. You can even still vote for Kamala and feel slightly bad about her stance on Israel. Wheres the problem with allowing some nuance here? Turning this into all or nothing, live or die, good or evil, is not very convincing in my opinion.
I actually don't know if you are with me or against me, but I really like the energy of your post, made me feel like I was walking to the corner store with you.
You mean to tell me that centrists would rather throw a tantrum and withhold their votes just because they didn't get 100% of everything they wanted, even when that would mean guaranteeing a Trump victory?
The exact same shit they've been accusing progressives of doing? The same rationale they use to blame progressives for Clinton's loss in 2016?
Why does Vote Blue No Matter Who only ever work one way?
And yet any objective observer would conclude you hate "liberals" as much as any Nazi hates minorities. Also nice job inappropriately using the word Nazi.
The way you write begs for all of your ideas to be discarded wholesale. You obviously aren't looking to convince anyone, only to feel superior, which you aren't. To anyone.
The analogue here being you thinking spewing your vitriol is fine because, you see, anyone who doesn't share whatever reality-divorced views you hold are vermin.
Where it breaks down is Bibi and Likud taking that defensive support and directing it into the Genocide.
That's on THEM. The United States is making a good faith effort to provide support for the defense of Israel. Israel is intentionally misapplying that support.
Trump's stated policy is that Israel needs to kill everyone quicker.
“They’re losing the PR war. They’re losing it big. But they’ve got to finish what they started, and they’ve got to finish it fast, and we have to get on with life.”
Only one of these two policies is pro-genocide, Trumps.
Biden/Harris is pro-defense which is illegitimately being used for genocide, not at all the same as being pro-genocide.
That’s on THEM. The United States is making a good faith effort to provide support for the defense of Israel. Israel is intentionally misapplying that support.
This is not a good argument. They're not infants, they have agency and the ability to perceive the impacts of their actions.
Biden/Harris is pro-defense which is illegitimately being used for genocide, not at all the same as being pro-genocide.
Eh, it certainly means they're not proactively anti-genocide.
But more importantly it's not going to move someone uncomfortable with the Democratic material support for the genocide a single iota closer to accepting that there is still a better candidate both for Palestine and for all the aspects where they're actually good, not just not as a bad.
Israeli vs. Palestinian support isn't nearly so overwhelming that there is simply one side that guarantees loss. This is an excuse by you for them, not a truth of politics.
So is your argument that the Biden/Harris administration is blind, or stupid?
If I give my kid an AR-15 and they shoot up a school, I may or may not be culpable.
But if I hand them another AR after the first shooting, they kill again, and then I give them another, and another, and keep handing them weapons for months, and theres a pile of 15,000 dead children, then I am definitely culpable.
It doesn't matter how many times I tell the kid "this AR is for defense only".
This shit is so disjointed. Its not a genocide, its only a genocide because the countrys leaders want it to be, Biden is only arming a genocide because those leaders want to use the weapons for genocide. You're stuck, man, you cant get past any of the uncomfortable truths. You cant make an argument that its not a genocide. You cant make an argument that our government is not arming and funding that genocide. You cant make an argument that youre not supporting a candidate that is likely to continue to arm and fund that genocide.
I wish it meant we did nothing for palestine. Instead of it meaning bombs and funding continues to pour into the arms of the country thats killing them.
Genocide is an absolute non starter. If one party supports it and one supports it harder, you need to burn down the whole political field and start over.
Both pose a threat to the country, but right now one dragged themselves out of the sewer like they do every four years to talk progressive and proactive, then proceed to legislate like their Republican counterparts after the election.
My goal is to defeat both threats to the country and our quality of life, not slowly extend everyone's pain.
Liberals refusing to challenge the system that allowed a demagogue like Trump to be elected will be the demise of the country. Saying war is bad but I'm gonna vote for you regardless is not challenging the system, that's rewarding them for bad behavior. Electing the people complicit in propping up that system only prolongs the suffering of people.
They will cling to fascism to protect the few table crumbs that get tossed at them.
Nice straw man. You're throwing your vote away because you are voting for a candidate that has zero chance of winning, while one of the two actual options is a literal fascist who will give Netanyahu carte blanche in Palestine and the other realizes she has to walk a narrow tightrope before November if she wants to get elected and have any influence over Israel whatsoever.
But I know you know this already.
If the Green Party was a serious political party, then why do they never care about down ballot elections? Why don't they ever care about local elections? Why do they disappear, only to crawl out from their hole every four years to sow division among American voters?
Netanyahu has Carte Blanche right now. The US has completed over 500 weapons deliveries to Israel. And Harris has already said she's continuing the shit we have going on right now.
There are plenty of greens holding local offices right now, but you would know that if you looked instead of relying on someone to feed you propaganda that's designed for their purposes.
Why is it every 4 years Democrats rise from the sewers and talk progressive and populous then go right back to legislating like their Republican counterparts after the election?
Telling someone their vote is wasted or meaningless is right-wing authoritarian voter suppression.
No, it's not a fully functioning democracy that does not represent the will of the people. The will of the people are saying they want a ceasefire, they want an end to war. Which falls on deaf ears to politicians. The only thing Democrats or Republicans ever respond to is the threat of money stopping, which was the only thing that kept Biden from running.