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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I agree. The only time I hear her name is around election time. It’s too late then, the work needs to be done in between.
The way she, her party, and her campaign conduct themselves make it hard to avoid the conclusion that she’s running purely as a Democratic spoiler candidate (that is, with the intent of siphoning support away from the Democratic candidate).
Edit: to be clear, I am a staunch supporter of environmentalist causes in general. I just don’t believe the Green Party actually is an environmentalist cause at the end of the day. I judge these things by actions, not by policy documents.
Yeah environmental causes have a lot that can and must be done at the local level. I’m a staunch environmentalist, it’s my primary issue, and it’s why I’m angry at my local government. I wish we had a good third party because the election is decided in the democratic primaries. Get someone running on improving public transit, forcing all apartments to offer recycling (mostly concerned about glass and metal), improving bicycle infrastructure… But funnily enough the greens don’t seem to give two shits about that easy picking.
Especially using the name and clout to help the local races which are run more often. Get third parties well known regionally with serious candidates, you’ll see demand for them grow nationally.
And some of these local places could use some good faith environmentalism. Co-opting the environmental cause to act purely as a spoiler is going to have consequences for hundreds of years in the US. Could you imagine if Ohio had had good faith green party elected officials raising a ruckus after the train de-railed? or the difference in Flint if there had been anyone there to say, hey wait a minute, that’s not how water works!
Instead we’re building more highway lanes, farming the deserts, and looking the other way as corporations make people homeless. (Humans are horrible at living with the land, it’s not just homeless people. Check out any tourist camping area by the end of September.) That’s what really pisses me off.
As an Ohioan want to know what party doesn’t bother running in Columbus? The greens. It’s proof to me that they don’t actually care about trying to govern.
The Cheetos bag in the Carlsbad Caverns story says so much about our species in one breath.
Yup. This country could use some good old fashioned environmentalism.
Just because you don’t hear her name doesn’t mean she isn’t putting in the work
This is about a politician supposedly running for a presidential office, that’s exactly what it means. If people aren’t hearing your name this close to an election you aren’t really trying.
I was responding to a comment that said they never hear her name outside of the presidential election cycle
Yes, we know. Now show us all of her political work that she’s done outside of presidential election cycles.
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the only news I can find for Jill Stein from 2021-2023 is
She was running Cornel West’s presidential campaign at some point, not sure what happened with that [link]
she got in trouble with the FEC for campaign finance issues [link]
I mean… maybe. So was she? What did she accomplish between her presidential bids?
crickets
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It just implies it.
The records of what she does, and the performative activism, which takes place entirely and exclusively during presidential election years - that’s what shows she isn’t putting in the work.
After repeatedly losing in Mass, the only time she runs for anything is for presidential elections. This also demonstrates she isn’t putting in the work, or she would have more involvement in more local elections.