Jill Stein announced a surprise presidential bid Thursday, seeking the Green Party’s 2024 nomination. Stein, a physician who ran against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016 as the Green Party&…
She will once again campaign only in states where it is possible to flip to Trump. Instead of safer states where she could get 5% of the vote and thus qualify for matching funds for the green party.
That is how you know it's completely bullshit and she is being run as a spoiler candidate for Trump.
Well that and the picture of her and Michael Flynn sitting at Putins table at a Russian state dinner in December of 2015.
How tragic is it that there isn't even enough enthusiasm to maintain a genuine, non-astroturfed or political spoiler based environment first party and platform?
As pissed off as some are, anyone myself included not getting arrested trying to protest/sabotage oil lines aren't taking the destruction of our only shared habitat we all rely on literally from one breath to the next seriously enough.
I know I know, we don't need to breathe, we don't need crops or fresh water, we just need more jerbs and a stronger economy to drop dead in. Lol, humans, I'd say nothing of value will be lost, but we aren't just killing ourselves. And as projections continue to worsen, and our circumstances grow more dire, all the other species that had nothing to do with what we did will barely enter our collective minds as we languish in self-pity, as if the once bountiful Earth we raped, pillaged, and burned somehow betrayed us instead of the other way around.
Part of the problem is the First Past The Post system. Any third party will just bleed votes away from the closest major party. In the case of a party dedicated to protecting the environment, this means votes taken from the Democrats. If the third party grows too powerful, they will split too many votes with the Democrats and Republicans will take control. And once that happens, the environment will be trashed. (Well, trashed even more than it already has been.)
If we switched to Ranked Choice Voting or Approval Voting, you could vote for a third party and still pick a major party candidate as your fallback position. So you could theoretically vote for Jill Stein (ignoring all the other problems with her) and vote for Biden as your second pick (or third or fourth). When Stein failed to get enough votes, your vote won't be wasted, but would revert to a different choice.
Until we get ranked choice voting or similar the Green Party is a joke with zero chance of election. Voting for them only helps Republicans at this point in time.
If less enthusiastic Republican voters have a chance to vote for a neutral party instead of voting for a shitshow, then how is it helping Republicans?!
if i would vote for jill stein or cornel west (i mean, i have to be honest, it's nice to have choices) or the libertarian or no candidate at all, how do any of those votes help republicans?
the only vote that helps republicans is a vote for a republican.
Wrong. Dead fucking wrong. Due to our current shitty system the only parties with any chance of winning are Dems or GOP, every vote that doesn't go to the Dems is another point the GOP has over them. If you don't vote for Dems you're facilitating fascism. Simple as.
I don't like our choices but we don't have the option to be fucking picky right now, there's fascists at the door and they're working hard to ruin our lives.
i think she's thinking "now's a good time for a green president" or maybe "now is a good time for an antiwar president" or "now is a good time for a woman president". but what do i know? i'm just gonna vote for her.
I mean, in the primaries, I'll vote for whomever I personally like. But when Biden inevitably wins the nomination, I'll be voting for him, because it's either him or fascism. That's not a hard choice to make.
Democrats have done nothing to earn our votes, they are not entitled to them. Democrats have enabled every one of your bullet points. 'Splitting the vote' is liberal myth.
Yeah because why let facts get in the way of your alternative reality, tankie. I'm a very lefty guy and not a fan of the Dems. But splitting votes is real and a real strategy. Say something when she doesn't focus only on battleground states and her funding is all grass roots.
Democrats have done nothing to earn our votes, they are not entitled to them
Jill Stein and the Green Party have achieved literally nothing in their 22 years of existence.
They haven't elected anyone significant at any level of government, haven't authored any significant legislation, and have done the bare minimum to shift political discourse. They also have to earn our votes, and so far they have done very little to earn mine.
Even discounting the obvious statistical reality of the spoiler effect, is Jill Stein really the best candidate the Green Party has to offer? How on Earth can a party with so little to lose be so obviously out of fresh ideas already?
Say what you will about the libertarian ideology, but at least I can give the Libertarian Party credit for putting a couple asses in seats at various levels of government. The Green Party, in comparison, has had no such success, and the fact that they're going back to Jill Stein (a weak candidate who's buddies with Putin and didn't perform well) shows that they have very little intention of improving.
‘Splitting the vote’ is liberal myth.
I'm sorry but you are absolutely delusional if you really believe this.
Whether you like it or not, vote splitting and the spoiler effect are well-documented statistical realities based on the flaws of our current first-past-the-post voting systems. This is 100% a math problem, and it's one that's been written about a lot by many different people.
If that bothers you (and it should) then I encourage you to read up on alternative, more democratic voting systems like Ranked-Choice (aka Instant Runoff) and STAR voting systems, which are generally more fair and far less susceptible to problems like spoiling and wasted votes.
Don’t believe history, modern political theory, basic math, or your eyes, instead believe me! My area just managed to out a fascist through splitting the vote so it’s very actionable.
this and the fact biden was so un-apologetically banking on homophobic, sexist and classicist issues until well after it became politically convenient to change is exactly why i stopped voting democrat and i love that i've been able to convince other who i have a relationship with to stop as well.
No thanks. I'll vote who is likely to win based on mathematics with weighs on preference on top and those I prefer on the downballot. Do this enough time, and there will be a split between progressives and moderates when conservatives eventually become ineffective minority.
I cast a Jill Stein protest vote in 2012 because Obama had a lock on my state, and I felt like Obama and the Dems in general had strayed too far to the right. Obviously, Obama won my state and the presidency, which is what I actually wanted. I just felt like we could move the Dems to the left by showing them they were leaving votes on the table. That does not work. I can get into why, but the basics are that third parties only act as spoilers.
In any case, Jill Stein is a terrible candidate on paper. All she does is mouth the dream set of policies a lot of us would love, but has no program to achieve them, she has no experience picking staff or running a large organization, she has all the charisma of a rotten banana, and she refused to throw down against anti-vax because it’d alienate half her base.
I’m for a serious Green Party in the US - one that is actually oriented towards governing. The Greens internationally are a real party, not the party equivalent of Vermin Supreme.
Honestly, most of the US agrees with the Greens on a lot of issues, and they could make enough of a big tent that a seriously (constructed and funded) Green Party could probably take multiple seats in the House, at the very least. They could caucus with the Dems, but try to pull things left. They’d work like the Squad, or Bernie and Warren. Between the coasts and the big cities, they could probably swing ten or more seats.
But instead we get Jill, yet again. Honestly, I’d like to see an investigation of her Trump-like election challenging fundraising.
Stein, a physician who ran against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016 as the Green Party’s nominee, previewed her latest run for the White House on social media and unveiled an accompanying website.
Stein wrote on her website that she is entering the presidential race “to offer people a choice outside the failed two-party system, so we can put a pro-worker, anti-war, climate emergency agenda front and center in this election and on the ballot in November.”
Stein’s last national bid in 2016 sparked considerable anger from Democrats, who argued she contributed to the election of Trump by taking away votes from Clinton in close swing states including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
She has promoted early support of the progressive platform, including a Green New Deal, the sweeping environmental reform agenda favored by climate activists.
The 73-year-old doctor and environmental advocate joins a chorus of outsiders competing for the Oval Office as discontent with Biden reaches new levels a year from Election Day.
In addition to West, fellow progressives Marianne Williamson and Cenk Uygur have launched long-shot bids, as well as independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who is running against Biden as a Democrat.
The original article contains 411 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 51%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!