We need to start planning how to primary Jill Stein in the Green party in 2028

Politics & Elections
1

Jill Stein is the green party presidential candidate. She is a Russian asset whose job it is to help the democrats lose. She appears every 4 years, does everything she can to help the democrats lose, then disappears until the next presidential election.

https://www.thirdway.org/memo/jill-stein-a-russian-asset-and-a-hypocrite

In a normal presidential primary, the candidate in a major party may get ~15 million votes. In the 2016 democratic primary, Clinton got 17 million votes and Sanders got 13 million votes.

In the 2016 GOP primary, Trump got 14 million votes. Cruz, Rubio and Kasich got 16 million combined.

By comparison, in the 2024 Green party primary, Jill Stein got (drumroll) 16,597 votes.

That number is possibly low, but if you look at the vote counts she got, its not that impressive. If its an accurate nationwide vote count, it means Stein got 796 votes nationwide in the 2024 Green party primary in all the states outside of California combined.

There are 420 delegates in the green party (heh) and you need 211 delegates to win the nomination.

In New York state, Stein got 53 votes and won 12 delegates.

In Texas, she got 43 votes and won 18 delegates.

She got 5 votes in Utah, and won 4 delegates.

In Kansas she got 7 votes and 4 delegates.

The only state were Stein got any ‘real’ votes was California, where she got 15,801 votes.

In most states, Stein got less than 100 votes. In some states she only got 10 votes or less.

So my impression is it would only take a couple thousand democrats and liberals in states other than California (we could easily find a lot of democrats in California disgusted with her bullshit too who would join this movement) who are disgusted by Stein’s attempts to sabotage the democrats to benefit the Russians to coalesce around a competent, patriotic Green party candidate to push Stein out of the Green primary.

A Green party candidate who agrees to the following things

  • Agrees not to run in the swing states
  • Encourages voter agreements so people in swing states who want to vote Green can vote democrat in their state if someone in a non-swing state agrees to vote Green for them.
  • Makes ranked choice voting their top priority
  • Denounces Russia, Russian money and Russian influence

And I know that Stein didn’t cost Harris the election in 2024. Harris still would’ve lost. But Nader helped cost the democrats the election in 2000 and Stein helped get Trump elected in 2016.

2

I’m afraid to ask how this agreement is verified. Whatever the answer is there, this proposal is going to make it easier to smear Democrats as being secret extremists mixed up with those unpopular Greens.

The problem this thread addresses seems to me a small one compared to the situation in Canada and the UK, where there are much larger left of center third parties. The cure could be worse than the disease.

I do like ranked choice voting.

3

…exactly.

You are going to have MUCH BIGGER PROBLEMS to deal with at the next election than whom might or might not be at the head of the Green Party. Like for example, are there even going to be fair and impartial elections any more.

The reality is that at the last election if you didn’t support the Biden’s unbridled support for the “war” on Gaza you only had two choices: Stein or you stayed home. I think when push came to shove, they chose staying home over Stein. I think its that you have to grapple with. When you look at who had a bigger impact on this election, I’d suggest that the Israel lobby had a FAR greater impact than Russia.

4

How are left parties in the UK and Canada a problem?

5

How are left parties in Canada and the UK a problem?

6

This process of vote trading was used in 2004.

Also in 2004 the Green party candidate tried to avoid running in the swing states and focus on safely red or blue states.

An issue of contention within the party was whether the campaign should concentrate its efforts in “safe states” — those that were likely to vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate by a large enough margin that voting Green would not change the winner — or whether they should seek votes everywhere.[3] Cobb stated his intention to run a campaign focused on building the Green Party and pursuing a “strategic states” or “smart states” strategy which would take into account the wishes of Greens in each state, and which otherwise would focus on states that traditionally are “safely” won by the Democratic candidate, or “safely” won by the Republican candidate, with a large margin of victory.[7]

These aren’t new tactics, these are tactics the Green party used in 2004.

7

I’m not sure it is a problem for me, because I’m uncertain how I would vote if I was British or Canadian. But here’s why it could be a problem for the center-left in those countries:

I would think that most of those who vote for the New Democratic Party in Canada (18 percent of popular vote in 2021 elections for 7 percent of House of Commons seats) would vote for the Liberals if they could only choose between the Liberals and Tories. This makes it possible for the Tories to win with just under 40 percent of the vote, as in 2011. .

The current situation in the UK is different because the Liberal Democrats, at the last election, got almost a big share of the seats as of the popular vote (12 percent of popular vote for 10 percent of the seats)… But, the election before that, the Liberal Democrats were very inefficient in converting votes to seats.

There are other ways to look at the Canada and UK situations than I do above. But the impact of the New Democrats and Liberal Democrats has to be bigger because they get such a high percentage of the popular vote compared to the U.S. Greens.

8

The UK situation is rather more complicated.
The Liberal Democrats are more central (at least relative to the rest of UK politics) after the 2010 general election they formed a coalition government with the Tories, they are unlikely to do so again not becasue they have swung to the left but because they lost most of their seats in 2015 because they were unable to convince the electorate that they had had any real influence as a junior party in government.

The UK Greens are a left wing party that got 6.7% of the vote but only 0.6% of the seats. If they had not stood most of their votes would have gone to Labour (and probably some stay at homes)

The reform party were the opposite In this years election they got 14.3% of the vote, while our electoral system and the geographic spread of those votes meant they only got 0.6% of the seats most of those votes would otherwise have gone to the Tories, if Reform hadn’t stood the UK election would probably have been very close, as it was the Tories got less than 30% of the seats Labour got.

9

Well, in some states, 3rd parties were the difference between a trump and a Harris win. So, it is not a bad idea.

10

…I think you should put absolutely ZERO effort into planning how to primary a candidate for a party you don’t belong to, and instead focus on cleaning house for the party you DO belong to. Its a strategic battle you are never going to win.

11

And that is your opinion.

12

…congrats! That’s how this place tends to work. You are correct: that was, indeed, my opinion.

13

I think you’re making a mistake about the different impact of third party votes in a presidential system and a parliamentary system.

In a presidential system, only one person can win. Having a third party candidate who has no chance of winning but consistently draws votes away from another candidate is the issue that most Americans seem to mean when they discuss this issue, and talk about “wasted votes” and a “spoiler”.

In a parliamentary system with three or more parties, a vote for a smaller party is not necessarily a “wasted vote”. The smaller party candidate you voted for may win in your riding, and then can express their party views in Parliament.

In a hung Parliament, or in a situation where the third party is putting electoral pressure on one of the major parties, that could lead to one of the major parties adopting a policy from the third party (or “stealing our good ideas!”, depending on your viewpoint). In some cases, the third party may have enough clout to get a confidence-and-supply agreement with the government, in return for the government adopting some of the third party’s policies. Or there might even be a coalition agreement, where the third party gets seats at Cabinet and can influence policy decisions directly.

Third parties in a parliamentary system do not necessarily play a spoiler role.