“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.”
Counterpoint: The Green Party hasn’t done much to keep people engaged. They killed themselves.
At least the Tea Party had a decent run and engaged with the people who would vote for them. Though, it let MAGA convert or overtake it, but the point still stands. The Tea Party did more in the 10ish years it existed than the Green Party has done in 20 years.
Counter-counterpoint: the Tea Party was an astroturf movement funded by big oil, big tobacco and the Koch brothers. Given massive amounts of support by media companies (lots and lots of oxygen). With the purpose of taking over the GOP and entrenching their toxic industries and power.
With the perspective we have now it is clear that their plan was to push Republican supporters over into fascism (not to say that it wasn’t latent within many of them) and reduce the risks of democracy to the oligarchy.
And Stein’s answer every single time this comes up?
“What about Gaza?”
She is literally an operative for Russia and the Republicans. This isn’t even a meme or conspiracy theory, it’s simply a plain truth.
I don’t understand how a genocide can be taken so lightly. Some people have trouble casting a vote for any political party that sponsors one.
I’ve given more details elsewhere, but the short version:
We can classify US presidential votes into three categories:
- Vote for the Democrat
- Vote for the Republican
- Vote third-party/independent or don’t vote
The most effective vote to make on an anti-genocide platform is #1.
Voting for a Republican is voting for a party that appears to be profoundly okay with the genocide in Gaza AND wants to start some genocides of their own (e.g. against trans folks, immigrants and racial minorities). This is the most pro-genocide vote.
Voting for a Democrat is voting for a party that has a fairly significant group that opposes the genocide, and which appears to be movable on the topic.
Any other vote is roughly equivalent to not voting. On the presidental front, there is no chance in this election that anyone other than a candidate from one of the main two parties is elected, and that’s also true for most senate or house races. (Possibly all, but I don’t want to make that strong claim since I haven’t actually researched all the races.) Voting for a candidate who you know won’t win is explicitly choosing not to have a say between the tho feasible candidates.
I do have one caveat though…
If you live in West Virginia for example, it’s a bit more complex. There your choice is essentially “the Republican or not the Republican,” so third-party/independent moves into category 1. However, then I’d argue that voting for the Democrat for president may still be the preferable response because if the Republican wins the electoral college but, (as has happened in every presidential election since 1990 except 2004) the Democrat still wins the popular vote, it further delegitimises the Republican’s presidency and the electoral college.
Okay Mr better party choice. Here’s a scenario: You and your friends vote for Jill Stein over Kamala Harris. Now, Kamala Harris has something of a chance to get a ceasefire out of Israel and stop the killing she has stated that that is her goal. But she doesn’t get elected because you and your friends voted for Jill Stein. No, instead Donald Trump gets elected and he pumps the gas on the genocide in Gaza as he has stated several times that he absolutely will do. He pours every military asset we have into Israel and gives them carte blanche to wipe out everyone in Gaza. And then on top of that he pulls all of our aid out of Ukraine and Russia steamrolls over the ukrainians wiping them out.
Now who supports genocide?
I wonder what it was about your comment that made the mods remove it. I don’t see any rules broken.
The other thing I don’t understand is all the anger and vitriol from you guys. Everyone who lives in the US and contributes tax dollars to the federal government supports genocide. The US has been supporting Israel unconditionally for decades. Do you really think Kamala Harris is sincere about stopping this, given how Biden’s administration has handled the situation? Or any other Democrat or Republican since Carter?
I support the college protestors even when people say they’re hurting the cause, but I would say Jill Stein definitely hurts the cause.
I think you’re suggesting Trump would be worse than Harris for the cause. But my point is that a lot of people feel that voting for either is sanctioning genocide, and Stein fills that niche by condemning it. It’s pretty low-hanging fruit for a politician.
I’m legitimately curious as to how college protestors could be hurting the cause.
I know, it’s like when Jews bring up the Holocaust all the time. So annoying!
Imagine being such a scumbag that you make fun of the Holocaust because you don’t like a country that didn’t exist in 1944. Or is it maybe the race of people you don’t like
Right, making a joke about a past Holocaust is so much worse then implicitly endorsing one your own country is perpetrating right now.
😂 🤡
The ronald dump supporter thinks other people are the ones vulnerable and susceptible to propaganda.
Pure fucking comedy.
Jill Stein is both a terrible candidate and possibly a Russian agent. Even if I do align with much of the green parties stances and I live in a solidly blue state, I would never vote for her out of principle
then you are effectively falling right in line with the lies the DNC sold you since the “russian agent” theory is easily debunked after 5 seconds of googling.
Is she really responsible for the problems of the US Green party?
As near as I can tell the EU Green parties had a different trajectory. They initially started winning seats in parliaments on purely environmental platforms. Those MPs actually started pushing green agendas in various parliaments. That, in turn led to more people voting for them. Eventually that had to adopt policy positions beyond the environment and they tended to be pretty left.
The US never had Green party members in a position where they could actually do anything useful about the environment. That means they could never fulfill their primary goal in the US. So when they tried to branch out the same way the EU Green parties did, they just turned into a vague hodgepodge of leftists ideas.
Is there any suggestion that Jill Stein’s replacement would have any chance of saving the US Green party?
The Green party is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It’s siphoning off eco-conscious Democratic voters just significantly enough to affect voting margins but not enough to win. To be clear I’m not saying that Even a significant number of people in the green party have that as a goal, but top down, that’s all it’s about.
We are a two-party system and they are allowing the green party to exist to use it as a wedge.
Then I guess y’all should starting reworking how your system works, because it doesn’t sound like a democracy at all if you can’t vote for what you actually believe in.
Agreed, but while we’re working on that in multiple avenues, we still need to vote for the harm reduction choice.
America has what I like to call ‘Monkey’s Paw Democracy’; almost as if someone wished for a representative Government from a cursed object.
Now instead of voting for policies they like, voters are forced to vote against policies they dislike or risk being punished my having their rights slowly chipped away.
We would, but as it stands now it’s an authoritarian dictatorship, right wing hellscape, and a marginally awful moderate right wing dystopia in a trench coat and they’re not about to cede any distance to allowing us new liberties.
If we don’t get at least a 60% margin there’s a really good chance the guy that said this will be the last time you ever have to vote, I’m going to be a dictator on day one and I’m going to imprison all of the opponents, legislators and donors that went against me.
Outside of an actual moderate or left-wing coup which is pretty much impossible I don’t see there’s any way that this country is getting out of this.
The issue is she sucks all the oxygen out of the room with her pointless presidential runs and does nothing for the four years in between. There’s an inconsequential number of Greens who run and win elections in small cities and towns or less consequential elections, and none of them have won any federal elections. A real party leader would recruit and foster candidates in large cities and state legislatures— and then get folks to run for the US House, the Senate, state governorships, and then the presidency.
Stein is less a party leader and more a figurehead who basically seems to be in it for the grift. And so US Greens (especially in comparison to those in the EU) are less a party and more just a convenient label for those of a certain bent that want to run as something other than as a Democrat.
My question was more along the lines of the “(not so) the great (wo)man” hypothesis.
Let’s imagine that Jill Stein was permanently abducted by aliens. What do we think would happen?
Would the Green Party just collapse?
Would the former member just join the Democrats?
Would they start a new party?
Or maybe someone new would take over who could do a better job?
I think we’d likely just get someone who’s functionally equivalent.
Maybe vote count is instructive:
Nader 2000: 2,882,955
Cobb 2004: 119,859
McKinney 2008: 161,797
Stein 2012: 469,501
Stein 2016: 1,457,216
Hawkins 2020: 407,068
I don’t think the party would collapse without Stein. They have been around for decades and they have a cadre of oranizers who will continue to show up regardless of results. Stein is just the most famous person they can use for a presidential election, and you can see from the above results what happens when they run someone nobody has heard of.
I think they genuinely believe in their core values, and it’s unfortunate that Stein is their only viable candidate. They won’t ever be a real political party until they start winning local/state elections, but they’re looking to secure more federal funding by getting enough votes. If Stein disappeared then they would keep doing this but they’d never breach half a million votes. Maybe a progressive democrat in the House would smell an opportunity and break ranks to run for president with the Greens. That could maybe get them a million or two votes again.
Or maybe it absolutely does not matter who they run and they just get a lot of votes when the Democrats run particularly shitty candidates for president.
Even if you assume she isn’t a bad faith actor, she’s still objectively failed to pass the one thing the world needs, the Green New Deal, and environmentalism is in the worst shape it’s been in decades.
That’s not all her fault, but her protest candidacy weirdness put Trump in office the first time instead of spending that time and effort on actual policy so…
Fuck off already?
Haha oh really. It had nothing to do with Hilary being the worst candidate ever? The authoritarian electoral college founded to preserve slavery? The rampant voter suppression by Republicans that Democrats refuse to stop. It was all her fault huh?
Certainly if she has been trying to effect real change in a realistic way, rather than an egocentric impossible run at the presidency…
Things would have been different. She was one of many straws, which if subtracted, would have prevented trump
So for that and that alone, she and the rest of the greens can fuck right off.
See the No Labels folks for a more common sense way to be activist on national level politics.
Greens would be great if they would focus on good, winnable races from the bottom up…
What that called again?? Uhh ‘grass roots’
