“Supporting the Green Party” is, to me, a lot like “Supporting the Straight Dope Message Board”. Both of them are places where I interact with other opinionated thoughtful people, expressing my own opinion, sometimes banging out something akin to a consensus, other times remaining in disagreement. Unlike the SDMB, the Greens involve themselves in trying to have an impact on the surrounding community, to draw attention to the ideas we agree on.
Both of them do elicit the occasional eyeroll from me. In both environments I elicit my own share of eyerolls from other participants.
I was once a participant in MoveOn, the Democratic Party / Left Activist group that had some similarities but found myself facing a downhill waterfall of concepts and perspectives and ideas being poured from above, with very little openness to discussion amongst ourselves of ideas that the participants hadn’t already heard and knew to have been embraced by the Left in general.
I’m not saying that kind of close-mindedness to new ideas doesn’t exist among the local, state, and national Greens (it does), or that it doesn’t exist here (likewise), but it was more pervasive within MoveOn, so I drifted away.
I agree with this. I’d add it’s much more about emotions and how they feel about the communicator.
To address the OP: If your friend wants to continue to be able to vote for candidates like Cornell West, she should vote for Harris in this election. Trump’s stated intent is to rig the system/future election to stamp out all competitors and only Harris has a realistic chance to beat him in this election.
The Greens do a terrible job of organizing outside of Presidential election years when they side with Putin and Republican Party big money donors. I basically never hear them advocate for ranked choice voting. It’s all performative. Their most famous and successful alumni is Christine Sinema. They were more interesting during the 1990s, before they handed the election to GW Bush in 2000. Actual leftists should consider joining the DSA, who understand what being a spoiler is and support progressive policies.
This came up on my Twitter and it sums up the greens pretty well:
I assumed this was just a random BernieOrBust bro when I first read it, but no it’s Jill Stein’s bloody campaign manager. Like he works for a third party! If you wanted an alternative to those candidates they could have run one.
But no, much better to make a pointless Twitter statement while your boss accepts Putins money and David Duke’s endorsement, and help Netenyahu’s fascist buddy become POTUS. That will help the people of Palestine
Any truth to the cynical claim by some that (successful) political parties are really just Election Winning machines, and that policy is a secondary concern mainly the province of lobbies?
That’s a dangerous belief that leads to people supporting openly awful people - like for example Trump - under the theory that “Oh come on, they won’t really do what they are saying, it’s all just talk to get elected”. Heck, for years that’s how the ever-increasing extremism of the Republicans was downplayed, that it was all an act and they’d never do the things they claimed to support.
Recall how we were told again and again how they’d never really bring down Roe vrs Wade because it was all a ruse to get elected? Yeah, about that…
There’s some truth to this: the Green Party is exceptionally good at losing elections for example: it’s their core strength. Also, successful parties win elections.
As for policy, parties are coalitions. The Dems took a hit when they passed Obamacare: some swing district House members lost their seats. Interviewed later, they said it was worth it. In the early 1990s George Mitchell turned down a Supreme Court nomination, because he thought shepherding health care reform through the Senate was that important.
On the Republican side, tax cuts for plutocrats aren’t especially popular, but their donor class is committed to them, so that’s what they do. Other than that, the GOP policy apparatus has collapsed, at least relative to the 1990s and earlier. It’s all communications now.
No, voting for Kamala would not be throwing away your vote. It is an action that will contribute, no matter how small, to Kamala Harris winning and Donald Trump losing.
The reason a third party vote would be thrown away is that it doesn’t even do the minimal part of trying to stop Trump. And, if you believe what Trump supports is wrong, then you have a moral obligation to try and stop him.
Sure, you get to decide how you vote. But so does a MAGA supporter. It doesn’t mean I won’t tell you that you’re wrong, or see it as a betrayal to the various groups you could be helping.
The Green party is smoke and mirrors, as far as I’m concerned. Jill Stein chose to push a platform of things she could not do if she were to win. Like literally impossible. As long as she’s on the top of the ticket, I don’t believe that the Greens care about any of the stuff they claim to care about.
They actively were bragging about possibly preventing a Democratic majority in Michigan. What happens if they do that? Trump wins. So they are, in effect, actively fighting for Trump to win.
Sure, they won’t win because of your vote. But you’re still supporting them. You’re still using that little bit of power to support people whose intend is to cause bad things–despite what they say.
I wouldn’t tell a New Yorker it’s okay to vote Republican, even though Democrats will almost certainly win the state. And I won’t tell them it’s okay to vote Green, for what is largely the same reason.
You do not vote for who you want to win in a Democracy. You vote against who you want to lose. Any other votes are dangerous game, while accomplishing nothing.
“How to Explain that the Democracy Crisis Transcends Principle?”
Members of Green parties across Europe try to do exactly that:
Since the US Green party is far more of a Putinist stooge spoiler than a real political party aligned with any of those parties, I expect these pleas to fall on deaf ears.
One does wonder if there’s an underlying sense that it’s not that bad if we get someone we can openly fight against on all issues. Or that the country/world deserves to experience real opression if that’s what it takes for the people to rise.
