Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently made headlines for calling perennial Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein “predatory” and “not serious.” AOC is right.

Giving voters more choices is a good thing for democracy. But third-party politics isn’t performance art. It’s hard work — which Stein is not doing. As AOC observed: “[When] all you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you’re just showing up once every four years to do that, you’re not serious.”

To be clear: AOC was not critiquing third parties as a whole, or the idea that we need more choices in our democracy. In fact, AOC specifically cited the Working Families Party as an example of an effective third party. The organization I lead, MoveOn, supports their 365-day-a-year efforts to build power for a pro-voter, multi-party system. And I understand third parties’ power to activate voters hungry for alternatives: I myself volunteered for Ralph Nader in 2000, and that experience helped shape my lifelong commitment to people-first politics.


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  • zephorah@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Downvotes are probably the people still livid that Tulsi failed, and who want a third party to break into this hopelessly entrenched duopoly of an election system.

    Fair enough, but thinking you can fix it by yourself isn’t going to fix it, just help Trump win.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Yeah you’re right. Their brainless response normally is to just shift focus away from trump as if he is irrelevant to the conversation

    • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      Or people smacking their foreheads that anyone took her seriously after she was revealed to be a Russian plant way back in 2017.

      I didn’t downvote, but I can’t upvote either, because seriously?

    • index@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      I downvoted because disbanding nato is a good thing and arming an authoritarian government is bad.