Look, whatever you think of Jill Stein, she can only be a threat to democrats because they are vulnerable to arguments from the left. If you don’t want to be vulnerable from the left, adopt some of their popular ideas. Putin isn’t tricking Americans into being anti genocide, or into wanting universal health care.
I know there are plenty of arguments to hit the dems on from the left. However, most of the attacks I’m privy to seem to be more about establishing leftist cred than actually doing something productive, and Jill Stein is one of the best examples of this.
Yes, but then being unwilling to take any concession is not. The green party could, for example, pull itself off of ballots in key states or elections when the Democrats agree to their policies.
Running a doomed to fail candidate that only weakens the likelihood of the most left candidates and pulling progressives out of the Democrat party is a bad move.
Say what your will about RFK, he’s getting political power from Trump by dropping (if Trump wins). What will the green party get? Nothing.
Dropping and endorsing after concessions is the real way for a minority party to weld power. Running no matter what is just delusion that works counter to any goal you might have.
It’s not clear to me what you mean here. Are you saying that AOC is attacking Jill Stein in order to bolster her own “leftist cred”, or that Jill Stein is chasing “leftist cred” by attacking democrats?
If it’s the second one, then I would just refer you back to my previous comment. Any attacks from Jill Stein could be easily defused by adopting a few popular planks. If you actually meant it the first way, then yeah I kind of agree!
Jill Stein attacking others on the left to establish leftist cred, just like so many other leftists we see on the net.
We have so much more in common than we have differences, and we could get a lot done if we were to band together - but instead we do the right’s job for them by dividing ourselves.
She isn’t so much making arguments from the left, but arguments from fantasy land. She thinks wifi is bad for kids brains and that we can stop using fossil fuels AND nuclear by 2030. Most of what she says simply had no basis in reality.
Are those the arguments you think that are siphoning off democratic voters?
No, but why would you trust the word of someone who makes those arguments?
If she thinks wifi may cause cancer, that we can totally phase out fossil fuels with no loss in quality of life by 2030, that we should phase out nuclear energy, and that we should entertain vaccine skepticism… Why should I even bother to listen to an anti science quack like her?
I want the genocide to end. I want someone in power who wants it to end and has a plan to make it end. Everything Jill Stein has said suggests to me she has no idea how reality actually works, nor that she has any ideas on how to achieve her stated goals. She’s just virtue signaling.
Now, a good leader can’t do or plan everything. They aren’t going to come up with every solution. That’s what they have advisors and like-minded allies in Congress for. If Stein was elected, she would have no fellow Greens in Congress, and we have no guarantee that she’d actually pick experts as her advisors – I’d actually expect the contrary from someone who thinks Wi-Fi causes cancer. But we don’t really know because the Green Party is utterly ineffectual and just cosplays every 4 years.
She can only be a threat to democrats in a first past the post voting system.
The Green party doesn’t run on its policies. They’ve opposed nuclear for decades, and we’d be having a very different conversation about global warming if they hadn’t basically won there. They have opposed WiFi and cell phone radiation as “cancer causing”, and have supported homeopathy. If they ran on their policies, they would find a dwindling number of people on the left who actually support them, because they’re vestigial loons concocted in a 1960s hippie lab.
The Green party runs on being the only party on the left that’s bigger than almost nothing. That’s it, that’s all they do.
Yes. And also, a loon who does not want to run on the policies her party supports, because she would lose even in a better voting system.
I do think RCV would be a better system than what we have now, but I have very little confidence that it could ever be implemented without some loopholes that would essentially undermine it.
Do you think Australia/Ireland have those loopholes too, or is there something else we need to fix first before it’ll work here?
Kamala and Walz are more left-leaning than any dem ticket in ages. If the purpose of the Green party is to move the democrats left, then they should drop out to reward them for moving left.
Why would they stop now in that case? “More left-leaning than any dem ticket in ages” is not a very high bar. Shit, it’s so low, you can’t even slip “opposes genocide” under it!
In France, Left-leaning parties got together and decided which ones had the best chance in each ‘district’ of winning, and the other parties would drop out. They did this to ensure that the Le Pen led Fascist party didn’t have a chance of winning. Sure, the aftermath hasn’t been pretty, but no neo-Nazis running the country.
Here in the USA, we should be doing the same thing, except the Green Party isn’t in this to win it. They’re in it to throw bombs. They’re in it to disrupt the ‘evil Democrats’. And they have help. Jill Stein was photographed sitting down with Putin, who really benefits if we’re ruled by Fascist Republicans. Republicans have been caught propping up the campaigns of alternative Leftist parties. And even Netanyahu is hoping Jill Stein pulls enough votes from Kamala Harris so that Donald Trump wins.
As always. This is a School SGA election, we’re the 51 Nerds arguing amongst ourselves, and the 49 Jocks, including the Book Girl who is pretending to be one of us, are watching as we argue our way into handing the SGA to the Jocks, so they can cancel Book Club, Chess Club, D&D Night, and everything else we support, because we’re too busy arguing with each other to realise that the only way we beat them is by delivering at least 49 votes to Nerd Boy on Election Day.
==================== Reposted as this shit keeps being relevant ====================================
This poster would have you believe that your vote cannot result in you getting the worst possible outcome. Allow me to make it clear that yes, you can screw yourself and those you care about if you make the wrong choice on your vote.
Let’s take a class of High School students. The class is pretty evenly divided between Jocks (49) and Nerds (51), and there’s an election for the SGA coming up. Looking at the numbers, it looks like the Nerds have a good chance of winning, by two votes, but let’s say that this isn’t as clear as the numbers show.
The candidates are pretty distasteful for a lot of students at the school. On the Nerds’ side is a geeky boy, with square glasses, buck teeth, and a taste for pocket protectors. This kid is stereotypical Nerd, with the personality to match. He’s vaguely unpalatable, being too much into D&D and video games, but he’s also really damn smart, and his platform are things the Nerds would really like – pushing the school to fund after-school activities like Book Swap, the D&D Club, Debate Team, Chess Club, and so on.
On the Jock’s side is a pretty blonde cheerleader, the Homecoming Queen and heart-throb for many a boy in that school. But she’s a massive jerk, with an entitlement streak a mile wide, known for throwing temper tantrum(p)s when she doesn’t get her way, and a platform that includes taking all the money that would have gone to the nerdy after-school activities and putting it into prom and sports.
Of course, this stereotypical school of the 1980s will use the voting system used by the USA back in the 1980s, the classic voting system of First Past the Post, where all the votes are counted, and at the end, the one with the most votes wins.
In a 49 to 51 election, it’s clear that the Nerds win by a squeaker, but that’s not how elections work in the USA, and Cheerleader has a secret weapon. Most of her friends are of course fellow cheerleaders, dance team members, and athletes. But counted among her number is a bookish girl who is good with her studies, someone that were you to glance at her, you’d assume she’s with the Nerds. But she and Cheerleader have known each other since they were toddlers, and while Bookish Girl is smart, she’s also desperate for attention and acceptance. Bookish Girl is Cheerleader’s key to victory.
Cheerleader and Bookish Girl sit down after school and go over strategy. It’s clear that the numbers don’t support Cheerleader. All 51 Nerds are pretty sweet on that whole “Nerd After School Activities” thing. But they aren’t all as firmly dedicated to voting. For one thing, Nerd Boy is not well liked, with no social skills what-so-ever. He’s the kind of guy that doesn’t get a girl easily, and is awkward around girls and does things that can easily be styled as being demeaning and degrading to girls. Nerds are also notoriously flakey when it comes to making appointments when those appointments collide with what they would rather be doing.
Bookish Girl suggests three strategies to Cheerleader. They are:
- Have one of Cheerleader’s groupies make an accusation against Nerd Boy that he inappropriately touched her. This should peel off two girls, who are known feminists.
- Set up a nerdy game on the day of the vote, drawing out a handful of gamers.
- Run Bookish Girl as a third party spoiler, who will say she stands for even more nerdy things so that she can peel off people who think Nerdy Boy can’t or won’t do the job.
Let’s say Election Day, 3 gamers skip out on the vote, one of the feminists stay home on the accusations, and the other, plus two more Nerds, vote for Bookish Girl. The tally of votes comes out to:
- 49 people vote for Cheerleader.
- 44 people vote for the Nerd Boy.
- 4 people do not vote.
- 3 people vote for the Bookish Girl.
Remember what the rules were? The one with the most votes wins. Those 7 kids ended up denying themselves and the 44 other kids the Nerd Boy’s platform. Hopefully they’ll enjoy the prom they’ll be excluded from and the constant bullying and teasing by the Jocks, because there will be no book club to go to, or D&D night to play in, or so on.
Really, all Cheerleader needed was for Bookish Girl to run, with a side dose of that other cheerleader’s accusation (let’s just call her Tara Reade…), and it’s 49 to 48 to 3, which is STILL a win for Team Jock. And that’s how narrow our elections are today.
You may think that Harris is a lockin to win, and you’re convinced by someone like this poster that you can vote third party. The problem is you can’t know how many Jocks and Nerds are in this school. Are there 55 Nerds and only 45 Jocks? Can you vote for the Bookish Girl over the Nerd Boy because Nerd Boy did something you don’t agree with in Junior High, or because he dissed your favourite pop culture icon, or he’s a GURPS player rather than a D&D player, or so on, and Bookish Girl is idealic? How will you feel when you wake up the next morning and come to school and see that Jocks won 45 to 44 to 11, and you and 10 other people are absolute dufuses who let the nerd activities go by the wayside?
And to make this REAL…how will you feel come the next morning if you wake up, see your State went to Trump, and thus gave Trump the 270 EVs he needed to win. Remember, Trump’s Jock-favoured activities can be read about in Project 2025…
In conclusion, you shouldn’t listen to dufuses like this poster. We saw what happened last time we let them poison our minds. Your vote CAN get you the absolute worst outcome, and the only people who want that to happen are accelerationists and Trump Plants. I’ll leave it to you to determine what THIS poster is.
Why would they stop now in that case?
Dems: “Wow, we moved drastically to the left and it’s still not enough to satisfy these Very Important Leftists. I guess they’re a lost cause as a voting bloc, considering that we’re already running a platform trying to get the widest possible spread between left and right voters that will only win on a handful of percentage points. Time to see if we can peel off any right-wing voters again.”
I mean I have to agree that it’s disgusting and pathetic that almost every western mainstream political party is complicit and the rest are silent at best.
But, if you can stand me saying it, I think we actually have a chance to change the party. A Dem ticket like this is a once in lifetime event. If they lose I would be surprised if I ever see one this good again in my lifetime. If they get in, and if they get in with a strong majority, I can see it fundamentally changing the party. Every dem who blames the left for losing elections will turn to dust instantaneously ( don’t fact check me on this ).
I don’t really know what effect it’ll have because I’m just some guy. But I think this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I think it could fundamentally change the DNC. It could disempower the right of the party and bring leftist ideas into the political mainstream. It won’t be perfect, but it could be something. It could be huge.
Pro-fracking, pro having a fascist in their Cabinet, pro-war profiteering even during a genocide, and you call it the most left-leaning ticket in ages? I hate that I have to agree, but I don’t think it’s as strong of a point as you’d like it to be.
If the democrats weren’t insisting on holding water for Israel’s genocide, the green party wouldn’t even be a nuisance to them.
Say whatever you want about how crazy they are, but the one issue the democrats are actually hurting from is their genocide support. If for no other reason than to push the dems to change that policy I think the greens are a huge benefit.
Absolutely right. All the people in my mentions are mad at this fact. I keep trying to tell them that it doesn’t matter what Stein’s whole platform is, as long as she has a saner opinion than the dems on genocide, she will be an alternative for a lot of people. Her voters know she won’t win, but they will not vote in support of a genocide! It’s not “single issue voting”, it’s having a moral baseline.
If someone is going to vote for Stein because of genocide they’re definitely not going to vote for Harris even if Stein wasn’t running.
