Jill Stein Is Killing the Green Party
Jill Stein Is Killing the Green Party
With membership at new lows and no electoral wins to their name, it’s time for the Greens to ditch the malignant narcissist who’s presided over its decline.
“With membership at new lows and no electoral wins to their name, it’s time for the Greens to ditch the malignant narcissist who’s presided over its decline.”
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I see a lot of anti Stein rhetoric lately I understand the push to not let her drag the ticket from Kamala but I wonder how much is true and how much is news trying to sway my opinion
edit; Imagine asking a reasonable question in 2024 lol
Stein has been a known Russian asset and Democratic spoiler candidate for about a decade now, being "Green" has never actually had anything to do with her political goals.
You're seeing anti-Stein rhetoric lately because it's a Presidential election year and that's the only time the Green party tries to be visible.
I'm sure the two or three Green people at the local level believe in the party's stated platform, but at the higher level it absolutely looks like the party exists only to siphon votes away from the Democratic party.
I would suggest you do your own research, but she’s run several times, has no real experience or qualifications, and has been shown multiple times to be benefiting (either knowingly or unknowingly) from both GOP operatives and Russian interference.
Personally I fully support third parties - if they do more than just show up as spoilers every four years. Jill Stein has been doing zilch to push the Green Party forward except in presidential election years. And as a result she’s doing more harm to folks who want more options than not.
How much do you hear about the Green Party OTHER than the presidential election? That should tell you quite a bit.
That’s because corporate media has a vested interest in not covering them. Their membership has stayed the same since about 2011
Could it be because they currently exist only as a spoiler party for the presidential election? The media doesn’t have a vested interest in not covering them, that’s republican “fake news” talk. Media LOVES conflict.
It seems that way because the Greens operate on a local and state level between presidential elections, by design:
The success of the 2000 Nader campaign had an ironic backlash among progressives -- some on the left faulted Nader and the Green Party for the defeat of Democrat Al Gore. In 2004, the Greens nominated attorney David Cobb for president and labor activist Pat LaMarche for vice president. Cobb, a longtime Green leader, pledged to use the presidential campaign primarily to build the party. His campaign’s goals included increasing Green Party membership, helping local candidates and initiatives, and creating state and local chapters where they did not yet exist.
Cobb also felt that Greens should emphasize the need for Instant Runoff Voting, and that if there were a relatively “progressive” Democratic candidate, most Green resources should be focused on those states where the Electoral College votes are not “in play” (which is most states). He saw this as necessary for Greens to appeal to a broad swath of the population.
The media chooses to not cover the Greens, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, the Working Families Party, or any socialist parties because that would give them credibility and undermine the capitalist controlled two-party message.
I am not defending the Green Party. I will not vote for them. But the narrative that is being pushed to suppress third party support is detrimental to democracy.
You've proved the point then. If Cobb's strategy was followed, the Greens would be in a far better position.
Note that I went to her own platform page and that was enough for me to be a hard pass even if I went worried about Trump and even I never heard anything from anyone about her.
The deal breakers for me were:
- Disband NATO.
- Stop material support of Ukraine
There's a bit more I find to be problematic, but those are sufficient.
NATO isn’t giving you ranked choice voting and healthcare
On the ranked choice voting, she wouldn't give you that anyways. Here's a clue, Alaska has RCV already. The president doesn't get to pick how the states run their elections. The place to push for RCV is at the state level.
On healthcare, you'd need congress. There's not even a whiff of that being a possibility, even less than Stein presidency. That's a general issue with her platform that there's very little "how" in how she could actually do anything, and much that isn't even theory under the authority of the federal government, let alone the office of the president.
Also, more directly related to your original point, disbanding NATO and withdrawing support from Ukraine get us exactly 0% closer to either of those goals as well. They just show that Stein is an unserious politician with extremely specific opinions on NATO and Ukraine for reasons I'm sure are unrelated to her funding.
You actually bring up an excellent point here -- the Green Party should be throwing everything they have at places with RCV. Yet, they're not. Those are the perfect races for them to win, and they don't give a shit.
So why are disbanding NATO and stopping aid to Ukraine even policy positions of hers? Shouldn't she be focused on ranked choice voting and healthcare instead?
NATO is the extension of neoliberal imperialism:
Beginning in 1991, U.S. strategy would seek to entrench that position, arresting the historical process of Eurasian integration. For Brzezinski, Ukraine was an “important space on the Eurasian chessboard”—critical in tempering Russia’s “deeply ingrained desire for a special Eurasian role.” The United States, Brzezinski wrote, would not only pursue its geostrategic goals in the former Soviet Union but also represent “its own growing economic interest…in gaining unlimited access to this hitherto closed area.”18
That project would be realized in part through NATO. The alliance’s expansion coincided with the creeping spread of neoliberalism, helping secure the dominance of U.S. financial capital and sustain the rapacious military-industrial complex that underpins much of its economy and society.19 The umbilical bond between NATO membership and neoliberalism was expressed clearly by leading Atlanticists throughout the alliance’s eastward march. On March 25, 1997, at a conference of the Euro-Atlantic Association held at Warsaw University, Joe Biden, then a senator, outlined the conditions for Poland’s accession to NATO. “All NATO member states have free-market economies with the private sector playing a leading role,” he said.
It's because she's strong on issues that Harris is weak on...especially the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Stein agrees with the majority of the Democrats: we should quit funding the genocide. Harris wants to continue funding it.