I have never heard of Jill Stein until just a few months ago when I saw some article about her on the Lemmy homepage. Then I saw more and more articles about her. However, I don’t really know why the media is paying so much attention to her. She is just a third party candidate, right? There are other third party candidates that aren’t constantly popping up in the news. So why Jill Stein? I hear its something to do with Russia and a general sense of her goal being to take votes away from Kamala.
The Russia thing goes beyond the dinner. She had attempted to (maybe actually has?) meet with him privately. She has also vacillated on Ukraine.
She’s had weird stances on vaccines, food (edit: GMOs), and even energy. It’s my understanding she’s privately invested in fossil fuels.
“Vacillated” is a very interesting way of saying that she’s refused to straight-out say that Putin is guilty of war crimes for invading Ukraine and pursuing a war of aggression. Every time she’s been asked about it in interviews, she’s used weasel-words to avoid coming right out and saying it, while implying that she has said it. OTOH, she will absolutely say that Israel has (and is) committing war crimes in Gaza, and is pursuing genocide.
Honestly? No idea. Didn’t watch the debate, because the kind of thing that would make me vote for Trump isn’t going to come out in a debate. Would it surprise me, given that Trump is so eager to slob the knob of any authoritarian, like Orban, Putin, or Erdoğan? Not even slightly. Stein at least–and this shows just how goddamn low this bar is–doesn’t praise authoritarian leaders.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I voted for Jill Stein in 2016.
In my defense, I didn’t think Trump had a chance, and I definitely didn’t expect him to be as terrible as he eventually proved. I was feeling salty about the DNC not giving Bernie a fair chance in the primaries (how and why, I don’t remember) and Hilary just felt like she was constantly condescending and not even trying to earn the presidency. It felt like someone decided it was her turn and they’d just slide her into her rightful throne.
My vote for the green party was official record that they hadn’t earned my vote, even though I would never vote for Trump.
I’m sure my one single vote wouldn’t have changed anything, but I bet there are plenty of others that felt the and did the same, and still regret it.
I’m still salty about Bernie being sandbagged. Not a big fan of how Kamala was shoved in either, but she’s impressing me more than I expected, I just hope it’s enough.
Yeah that was really some trash and made me furious. The one guy just directly stating all the ways we need to help the working class and also saying basically fuck the rich, with the career-long credentials to back it up, and instead we got force-fed Hillary. She was so unlikeable and entitled, it set the Dems (and shit, maybe even women in leadership as a whole) back by like 10 years. Cuz she acted like a shitty stereotype about women that fed right into the misogynists. Such a colossal fuck up, and that really is putting it mildly. I deleted a whole screed of even more forceful complaining, lol.
I’m sure my one single vote wouldn’t have changed anything, but I bet there are plenty of others that felt the and did the same, and still regret it.
Depends on what state you were in for that election, and how many other people voted for Stein alongside you.
Oh fuck.
Trump won PA by half a percent.
Stein got .8% of the votes.
Stein, the DNC, and 50 thousand people just like me, literally handed him the presidency.
I’m SO sorry, everybody.
Unfortunately, with FPTP and the electoral college, voting for a third party candidate for president is voting in favor of the major party candidate who you like the least.
This isn’t fair, it’s fact. It should be different, but it isn’t. NPVIC and/or RCV are the way out, and voting third party in this election makes those farther away, or wholly unreachable.
You didn’t hand Trump the presidency. The Dems did by not trying to gain your vote.
Never blame yourself for the flaws of representative “democracy”.
I did similar, I’m ashamed to admit, except slightly worse - I actually just didn’t vote at all, thinking I was really making my dissatisfaction clear that way. What a dumbass I was, and for the same reasons you described. And while a lot of that was undeniably true and a problem, I also now feel fairly sure the “don’t vote / vote 3rd party” push was an op, and I fell for it like a dope.
I’ve voted in every election I’ve been eligible for before and since 2016, and I will never allow myself to drop the ball like that again. Fuck the DNC but we gotta fight like hell to keep things from getting even worse and they’re all we’ve fuckin got at the moment.
I voted for Stein too. OTOH, I was in a solidly blue state where there was no real chance that Clinton wouldn’t win. And TBH, I’d voted for Clinton in the primaries in 2008, because I wasn’t sure if that Obama guy had the experience necessary to be president, since he was a one-term senator. But by 2016, and given the way the primaries ran and Sanders got sandbagged by the DNC, I was done with Clinton.
I solidly blame Clinton and Wasserman Schultz for the 2016 debacle. If Clinton had campaigned hard in PA, MI, and WI, and if Wasserman Schultz hadn’t made tipped the scale for Clinton in the first place with the entitlement bullshit, then none of this would have happened.
Don’t feel guilty it depends on where you lived. I voted green party I believe but I live in Delaware and that won’t affect the race outcome at all
Jill Stein is a Green candidate which means she’s going to pull left leaning support away from Kamala Harris.
If she pulls away enough people in a handful of states, she could throw the election to Donald Trump.
2016 is a primary example:
Pennsylvania:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Pennsylvania
Trump - 2,970,733
Clinton - 2,926,441
Difference: 44,292
Stein? - 49,941
Michigan:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Michigan
Trump - 2,279,543
Clinton - 2,268,839
Difference: 10,704
Stein? - 51,463
Wisconsin:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Wisconsin
Trump - 1,405,284
Clinton - 1,382,536
Difference: 22,748
Stein? - 31,072
If Clinton had won those three states, Trump would not have been President.
Stein is not the only factor, Clinton had other issues. She badmouthed coal miners which guaranteed a loss in PA and utterly failed to campaign in MI and WI which was not helpful.
But the Clinton fans who can’t accept how deeply, deeply flawed Clinton was as a candidate want to blame Stein…
And Putin. There are issues with Stein getting support from both Republicans and Russia, anything to hurt Democratic candidates.
But the Clinton fans who can’t accept how deeply, deeply flawed Clinton was as a candidate want to blame Stein…
Clinton was the worst possible choice. Before seeing the damage that Trump would do, thinking he would be mostly harmless, she made me stay home. I’m voting against that monster just like I did in 2020. The man is a menace.
Here are some of the common complaints about Jill Stein:
As the Green Party candidate she will pull in more third party votes than most (if not all) of the other parties. While those views are usually trivial in number in the grand scheme of things, they can have a big impact in let seeing states.
She has not gone out of her way to criticize Trump, and has instead treated both Trump and Harris as being equally bad, even though Trump is arguably much more anti-environmental than Harris.
This isn’t her first time coming in as what’s seen as a Democrat vote-spoiler candidate.
From the perspective of some, she pops up every four years to try to take votes off the Democrat candidate and then seemingly disappears for another four years.
She has a bit of a cult of personality thing going on - arguably moreso than either Harris or Biden.
She’s in her mid-70s, and so no spring chicken. This has become more of a concern this cycle because a) she’s for years older than she was in 2020 (obviously), b) age has become more of a point of concern given how both Biden and Trump have apparently seen marked cognitive decline at less than 10 years her seniors.
There’s some evidence to suggest she is cozy with Putin, who is clearly does not have America’s best interests in mind. For example, she was photographed at a fancy dinner sitting at the same table as him and several of his ‘crew’ (among others). The common excuse for this is “she didn’t choose her seating!” But equally there’s no reason she couldn’t have got up and moved or left the event.
Photo of the dinner in question, with labels:
I’m sure there are other points I’m missing. But those are the ones that spring to mind.
She has not gone out of her way to criticize Trump, and has instead treated both Trump and Harris as being equally bad…
I’m sold.
She solely exists so Trump supporters can try to steal votes from Kamala by pretending to be progressive. The US uses an undemocratic FPTP voting system, which means that there can only be two viable candidates at any given time.
