No no one “owes” any candidate their vote, they owe the country their vote and they should use their vote wisely in order to make the country better. A Clinton would obviously have been better for the country in terms of all of the things that the Greens purport to support than Trump was. Voting for dark horse candidate in such a consequential election demonstrates an indifference to the issues of climate change, corporate accountability, minority rights, and a woman’s right to decide what happens to their bodies, such that they are willing to cast those a side in favor of a feeling of personal purity.
And why do you think those “better” candidates and “better” platforms would get them elected, rather than just alienate a different portion of the electorate and cause them to lose by a wider margin? The Greens have to come to terms with the fact that their agenda represent a minority of the voting population, and that just because they are passionately sure that they are right, and may actually be right, doesn’t mean that their way will or should prevail in a Democracy. If their viewpoint can’t win in the Democratic primary where the deck is stacked towards those who support their view, how can they hope to win in the general election.
Now who is saying that parties are owed votes. Party affiliation is meaningless. There are left over Dixiecrats, there are conservatives who live in Democratic strong holds so want to vote in the Democratic primary, or maybe someone who’s conservative but has a friend who is running in a local election as a Democrat. In any case what ever the reason that these people registered as Democrats, their voting actions indicated that they supported the conservative agenda espoused by Trump more than the moderate/liberal agenda supported by Clinton. With the Greens on the other hand, their voting for a Green candidates indicates that they support a strongly liberal agenda, one that was utterly decimated by the Trump presidency in a way that was completely obvious going in and would never have happened under Clinton. But rather than stop the bleeding they opted in favor of pouting on the side lines.
If you really realistically want to advance a strongly progressive agenda here is what needs to be done.
Do everything you can to promote ranked choice voting. That way you can have it all, you can demonstrate your love for your chosen one while still using your vote to oppose evil.
Do everything you can to support progressive candidates in the Democratic primary. If you can’t win here, you can’t win nation wide so this is the first step towards relevence.
For gods sake if they choice is between absolute evil and 'meh, vote for the 'meh. 25 million women lost their right to their own bodies because because people didn’t make that distinction. Elections have consequences which means voting has consequences. Use yours wisely.
This is exactly what I see here. She was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t. She was a middle ground politician and a policy wonk. But she was a female so there was no path for her to
be a “good candidate.”
While it’s true that nobody owes their vote to any candidate, we do owe our votes to others who share our values, and to those who come after us. We owe it to them to vote in a way that will further progressive ideals or, at least, preserve what progress there has been so far.
Four things I admire about the Democratic Socialists of America are they don’t support Republicans, they don’t support fascism, they don’t spoil elections, and as far as I know they aren’t in Putin’s pocket. They have 3 publications, and support candidates securing offices from local school boards, to 4 winners in the 2020 US House elections. They’ve had their share of missteps and bad judgment but nothing approaching Green Party dumb.
Mehdi Hasan interviewed her. He really made her look pathetic, IMO.
This is a twitter clip and it contains a link to the full interview if interested, but you have to be a subscriber to whatever zeteo is.
At one point Mehdi asked her what she said to Putin when she was sitting across from him at the table and she said nothing because there wasn’t a translator. Mehdi then told her that Putin speaks English.
Good to read, but I don’t think Jill Stein falls under the heading of “useful idiot.” Her followers are the useful idiots. The accurate term for Jill Stein is Russian asset.
Well, at least the damage she can do to the Harris campaign has been lessened. If I’d known about this, I would have assumed that SCOTUS would allow her to be on the ballot, but perhaps I’m too cynical.
Nah, this was one of their ‘see, we’re not COMPLETELY on the extreme-right’s side!’ show-decisions. It’s just to keep us quiet and prevent actual action by Congress to do things they won’t like, such as holding them to the ethical standards other judges and justices must follow.
It’s window-dressing: fake ‘we’re impartial’ decisions, like the one decided June 13 of this year:
The Roberts Court is confident enough that Jill Stein not being on that ballot won’t hurt their Trumpy-wumpy enough to matter. So why not throw down a decision that makes them look like they’re actually doing the job they were appointed to do?