Democrats aren’t attacking Jill Stein because they think she is taking votes from Kamala Harris. No one I know who’s voting Green would consider a vote for Harris at this point. They’re attacking Jill Stein because they don’t want voters to know that there can be a worker-centered party to the left of the Democrats that supports popular policies like Medicare for All, a $25 wage and federally guaranteed housing.
There are 80+ million eligible voters who don’t vote at all because they don’t see the point. Democrats are okay with this, in fact, they don’t want any candidate to their left to appeal to those voters with popular policies.
The fact that the Green Party exists shows that the Democrats aren’t pushing the most progressive policies. Jill Stein’s candidacy shows that it’s possible to support reproductive justice AND be against funding and arming a genocide. That we can end homelessness if we stopped funding endless wars around the globe.
Democrats don’t want anyone to the left of them to exist because it’s the only way they can convince Americans that Dem policies are “the best that we can do”. To Dems, anything else is just “asking for a pony”.
Don’t fall for it. Despite Dem’s desire to have you think otherwise, things don’t have to be this way.
Another world is possible.
Democrats aren’t attacking Jill Stein because they think she is taking votes from Kamala Harris.
This is an incredibly dumb take.
This election is about triage. If you want elections to not be triage, you need to fix the conditions that make it triage before the elections ever happen.
What triage means:
Lets say you see a massive car accident at an intersection that’s known to be dangerous, and you have a medical kit in your car. (You have a medical kit in your car, right?) You have some basic trauma first aid experience. You have two tourniquets, two chest seals, a few packs of QuikClot z-fold gauze, and a combat bandage, along with EMS shears and a rescue hook. There are four people that have serious injuries. The first is conscious, has had both legs severed above the knees, and is blood is spurting from the severed limbs. The second is also conscious, and has a massive laceration on their left arm; a fractured bone is protruding from the laceration, and they are bleeding profusely. The third is not conscious; they have lost an arm and blood is spurting from the severed limb, have a penetrating chest wound, have a massive and profusely bleeding laceration on a leg, and significant head trauma. They are breathing in short, erratic breaths. The fourth person is conscious, and has a clearly broken lower leg with a laceration; they’re holding on to the laceration, and blood is seeping out between their fingers.
What do you do? Who do you help, in what order?
The person with the severed legs gets the tourniquets; they will bleed to death in less than two minutes without them. The person with the compound fracture gets the z-fold gauze and the combat bandage; unless the brachial artery is severed, they don’t need a tourniquet. You ignore the person with the head injury; you can’t treat the head injury, and the erratic breathing is likely agonal breathing from the head trauma. Using a tourniquet on them means that you won’t be able to use a tourniquet on the first person, which–in turn–means the first person dies from blood loss. Regardless of anything you do or don’t do, the third person will likely die. The fourth person does not need immediate care; their blood loss is not significant enough to kill them before paramedics arrive.
Triage is recognizing that you can’t help the third person–even though they will very likely die before paramedics arrive–and that the fourth person can wait until you’ve helped the first and second people.
The best you can do is help two people while a third dies. If you walk away, three people die. If you treat the person with the head wound, three people die. If you worry about the broken leg first, then three people die while you’re trying to help the one person that didn’t need emergency trauma care. Maybe you’ve been advocating for years to fix the intersection, while the city council has ignored you; that does nothing to address the immediate needs of the people in front of you.
This is where we are. There is no vote you can cast that is going to save everyone. No matter who you vote for, the genocide in Gaza isn’t going to stop. Stein won’t win, so she can’t stop it. Trump will accelerate it. Harris appears to mostly take the side of Israel. But by focusing on that, you fail to act in a way that can prevent other harms.
Most people don’t like how we’ve gotten to where we are now. But this is where we are, and railing against the system now doesn’t do anything to help the people that need help.
Meanwhile, you hand a couple more rounds to the sniper that caused the accident in the first place, who is actively and intentionally causing more accidents.
Lets say you see a massive car accident at an intersection that’s known to be dangerous,
The cause was already contained within the exercise.
You can either do what you can to help people now–knowing that there’s nothing you can say or do at this moment that will help the people of Gaza–or you can insist that you can help them and, in so doing, fail to save anyone at all. It’s your choice.
That is what triage is.
I’m going to be okay either way. I’m white, male, middle-aged, cis-, het-, and can pass as Christian and conservative if necessary. I own a home outright, have no significant debts other than student loans, and have sufficient savings and investments that I can survive the next four years regardless of who wins the election. Your choice to fuck everyone else over in this election won’t directly hurt me. It will hurt a lot of my friends, and I’m certain that at least a percentage of the LGBTQ+ people I know will die or be killed, I have no doubt that some of the undocumented people I know will be deported to countries they haven’t lived in for 30+ years, and I’m sure that my non-white friends will see a sharp uptick in violence directed at them. Meanwhile, the people in Gaza will still be murdered by Israel, because Trump and Netanyahu are both fascists.
You will accomplish nothing except causing more harm.
Tell your non-white friends, your LGBTQ+ friends, you female friends, that you didn’t care enough about their rights and their safety to help them. Say it to their faces. Tell them that it was more important for you to send a message than it was to prevent them from being harmed.
Good luck. You’ll need it. Hopefully we still get to vote in two years, and in four years.
Oh, I can say it to my own face, I’m trans. But I’ve also told all my trans friends that I’m not voting for Kamala, and have no difficulty doing so. There isn’t a single person in the world I wouldn’t look dead in the eye and say it to.
Your analogy fails to the account for the fact that you’re strengthening the very people who put you in that situation in the first place, so it is not a valid analogy (among many other reasons). You “accounted” for the cause in saying that the city council “failed to fix” the problem. In reality, they intentionally caused the problem, and doing your “triage” empowers them to cause it to happen more and more, neither of which you accounted for at all.
Today, Palestinians are the ones being “triaged.” Tomorrow, it could very well be us. By your calculus, if the democrats decide to throw us under the bus because they see us as too much of an electoral liability, you will still happily accept them as the “lesser evil” and all the arguments you’re using now to support killing Gazans, you will deploy then to support killing us. “The Democrats just want to sacrifice trans people, the Republicans want to go after trans people and gay people and…” Don’t try to pretend you wouldn’t, unless you’re prepared to explain why your “triage” analogy wouldn’t apply there too.
An injury to one is an injury to all. If we don’t stand up for Palestinians, if we allow minorities to be picked off one by one, then we are doomed because there will be no one left to stand up for us.
Oh, I can say it to my own face, I’m trans.
Good luck, because you’re going to need it if Trump wins. Being trans is difficult in deep blue areas now, and it’s going to be a lot harder if Trump wins. The very few labor protections that you have now are likely to evaporate under a Republican gov’t. And perhaps you’re okay with this, but how many of your friends are willing to be your sacrifice? I saw exactly what happened to the black transwomen in my area under Trump, and it was… Bad.
An injury to one is an injury to all. If we don’t stand up for Palestinians, if we allow minorities to be picked off one by one, then we are doomed because there will be no one left to stand up for us.
Minorities will be picked off in this election, whether you stand up or not. You can save some–specifically the ones that are in this country–or you can save none. That’s the reality we live in. This is the reality unless and until you can build a coalition that can win elections on it’s own, because that’s politics. This has always been the reality; disadvantaged people need to build political power by courting the people that have political power; women needed to convince men in order to get the right to vote, non-white people needed to convince white people to pass the various civil rights acts. If you take a no-compromises position, you will always lose.
That’s the “crabs-in-a-bucket” approach. We will never get anywhere if we’re willing to sell each other out and tear each other down to get ahead or protect ourselves. I’m never going to sacrifice solidarity with the oppressed in the hopes that our oppressors will be merciful. If I were that much of a coward, I wouldn’t have transitioned in the first place.
You say I will always lose with this path, but you don’t know that. What I do know is that I will always lose following your path. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the only thing that’s guaranteed to fail. Solidarity is the only viable strategy and the only one that makes any logical sense at all. As well as being the only moral position. You wanted to play that card of “look them in the face,” well I could never look a Palestinian in the face and explain why I’m selling them out just to save my own skin. They will level all their slings and arrows against us, but it is still better to stand against them together than to fracture and join them and fight against each other for a momentary respite until they inevitably turn on us.
Claiming that every victory every marginalized group has ever won was just handed down from above by appeasing the rich and powerful is absurd, ahistorical, and offensive.
Claiming that every victory every marginalized group has ever won
My dude. That’s the absolute truth. All the marches and riots in the world don’t win minority groups power unless they can get members of the majority group–members that have political power–to agree with them. You can talk about ‘human rights’ until you’re blue in the face, but rights only exist so long as they can be enforced. A powerless minority group can’t expect to enforce the rights that are supposed to be guaranteed to them, unless they have people with power that are willing to step up.
But again - by failing to be strategic, you will probably lose, and not just for yourself, but for everyone that’s even slightly marginalized.
I’m not going to discuss how I feel about you doubling down on “minority rights have always been handed down from above” because I don’t want to get banned, suffice to say I have no interest in discussing anything further with you.
Removed by mod
if you at all believe in a free Palestine, you will take action to vote for Harris
How? Harris isn’t even allowing Palestinian Americans to speak. She isn’t even trying to appeal to them or acknowledge them.
I was idealistic when I was young too
Thanks for the compliment but my bad back calls bullshit on me being young.
How?
Because Trump is firmly aligned with Netanyahu and opposed to the existence of Palestine.
And Biden and Harris aren’t? Harris even parrots the lies about mass rape by Hamas and that Israel is defending itself.
No. Not like Trump. Not by a long shot.
Trump openly told Netanyahu to eradicate the Palestinians. Trump has empowered Israel over and over again. if anyone gained anything during Trump’s presidency it was Israel.
Trump openly told Netanyahu to eradicate the Palestinians. Trump has empowered Israel over and over again.
Exclusive: US has sent Israel thousands of 2,000-pound bombs since Oct. 7
Pay attention to the news, please. Biden sent Israel thousands of 2000-pound bombs, he is helping Israel eradicate Palestinians.
Try reading more than a headline.
That’s better than what Trump has done and will do. It sucks but it’s the best option for the people in the area.
LLM bot??
No it isn’t. You can’t explain our situation to us, you have zero clue.
It’s absolutely incredible that people think this is an actual sound argument.
Agreed 100%. I reached voting age in 2008 and I was one of those “both sides suck” idealistic young voters who voted third party. I did again in 2012 and again in 2016 thinking “Hillary’s already got this one, I can protest vote”. Nope, we ended up with Trump. Ever since that I will only vote blue no matter who, at least as long as the Democrats are the only viable party with some sense of normalcy. Third parties are completely unviable in the US election system. We need ranked choice for a third party vote to not be a throwaway vote. Until that happens, we can’t afford to pick “the best choice”, we have to pick “the best choice that actually has a chance”. Even if it’s not really the best choice. Very happy to have gone out and voted early last week. We need the blue wave. Once the Republican party is thoroughly stomped into the ground and made completely unviable can we focus on a truly liberal third party, but honestly we probably have a better chance of slowly moving the Dems left than we do a third party taking over. It may not happen in my lifespan but I’d rather see progress than regression.
LLM bot?
Once the Republican party is thoroughly stomped into the ground
Okay, so we agree. You should not vote Democrats if you don’t like the Republican party, on account of them thinking a strong Republican party is necessary, them inviting Republicans to join their campaign, and promising a Republican in their cabinet.
Removed by mod
A socialist party would be nice in u.s politics.
There’s a few running, that the democrats tried and failed to kick off the ballot in many states. Party for Socialism and Liberation is one.
The US greens are also an eco-socialist party. Ajamu Baraka is a great anti-imperialist / communist writer, and he was the green party’s VP pick last time.
I heard of greens, but as a party I hadn’t actually seen them or any of the others covered much. Usually you just hear about Republicans and democrats. Might just be censorship and lack of exposure in the u.s.
If they would actually do the work at the local level to get candidates elected in towns, counties, and states, then they might even be viable at a national level at some point. But if they won’t put in the effort locally, then all they’re doing is fucking over the rest of the country when they run nationally.
Congrats you described the green party with nearly 200 elected officials across the US.
Oh, wow, nearly 200 elected officials out of 519,000 elected positions, that’s, like, .04%. (Actually, slightly less.) How many of them are state-level legislators?
They need to do MUCH better before they start trying to field national level candidates.
They can do both. Publicity is 90% of running for office, and stein running at the national level helps down ballot greens.
Also that’s more than all I ther third parties combined.
It… Really does not. Stein is def. hurting Greens more than helping. Everyone that actually pays attention to politics and policy closely can see exactly what’s going on, and can see that Stein is working for Trump and Putin; that’s at odds with what the party claims to stand for.
No one with any attention on politics thinks Stein is helping either putin or Trump, despite the DNCs best propagandists shouting it night and day for a decade.
No, the independently wealthy medical doctor isn’t selling out for a few hundred bucks from an organization that was refunded as soon as it became obvious it was Russian backed. Quite frankly I think most of the attacks on Dr. Stein are pure cope for the fact she’s by far the most educated presidential candidate in history, and one of the most consistent as well.
“The most educated presidential candidate in history”…? Really? Are you forgetting Ben Carson then? Or is she the ‘most educated’ because of her undergrad work? (Oh, wait, almost everyone does undergrad work before they go to medical school.) Did you forget that Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar? Or that Barack Obama was a law professor as well as being a civil rights attorney and specializing in constitutional law?
Given that Stein’s own campaign has said they can’t win, but that they can prevent Harris from winning, it’s pretty clear that she knows exactly what she’s doing. The only 3rd party candidate that has had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning in the last 75 years has been H. Ross Perot.
Fearmongering is the imaginary fence which keeps all Democrats locked where they are.
Once the dam breaks and the Green party has a winning chance voters will flock to Greens in droves.
They are definitely trying to censor Jill to keep the Greens from reaching the critical mass needed to have a chance at winning.
I feel like the real reason Democrats would be attacking her would be due to her happily accepting donations from Republican led sponsors, aiming to actively sway Democratic voters instead of specifically both, and the distance that she has from actual election given that she’s not on the ballot in a number of states and is posing herself as the anti-war candidate despite saying that Russia invaded Ukraine because they needed to defend themselves from nukes. Odd how it’s okay to be apologetic to Russia but not Israel. You must understand - as a third party they can claim to have a plan for world peace, but what members in Congress will sponsor those bills? Even if Jill Stein did become President, who is approving her policies?
All that aside – she does very little in between election years. The Green Party as a whole has accomplished less of its supposed goals while having far more funding than the SRA. I would also expect that the leader of the Green Party practice what she preaches, as her and her husband have stock in just as many oil companies as the Democrats do. So quite honestly, it’s hard to see her as anyone but a faux candidate who shows up to take money from Green Party voters, preventing actual change from happening with that money because it’s going into a candidacy that will go nowhere.
If she cared, she would campaign for her donations to be given to something that would actually have meaningful effects, and she would push for more local candidates to run. The sad fact of the matter is that the Green Party has candidates who start out Green then move to a different party and are completely happy taking donations from Big Oil just like Kyrsten Sinema.
To call the Democrats a joke party when the tactics of the Green Party have been laughable is just one reason why they aren’t taken seriously. Another would be this quote:
there are more open socialists in just the New York state legislature right now (8, all caucusing together, will be 9 next year) than have been elected total above the local level for the Green Party (5). even accounting for party switching, this expands to just 9 people in history.
We can also just look at the Public Office Holders for the Socialists and the Green Party.
In short – The Green Party is the vote of choice because there is a Presidential candidate, but they offer nothing else through the four years. People are asking where the Democrats have been for them, what about the Green Party? Why are they all too happy to take money from you but do nothing in between for local activism? People are saying that the Democrats only provide lip service when they say things like supporting a two state solution, but lip service from the Green Party is totally fine? The Socialists or the DSA seem to at least aim for actionable goals, but is there no support for them because there’s no Presidential candidate? We’ve also seen that they (Socialists) actually have a chance of being elected if they run on a democratic platform and push bills that we can be proud of, something that historically cannot be said for members of the Green Party.
I hope this provides some insight on why people, not just Democrats, don’t feel like the Green Party is a worthwhile option.
Good points. If anybody should be annoyed by the Greens campaigning only for the national election and going dormant the rest of the year it should be PSL.
Oh that’s possible, but I think the number of votes that she’s likely to get is so low that there are much better ways to try to win the election than worrying about her antics. But if Harris were to lose, it sure would be convenient to have someone to blame, and Stein’s an excellent scapegoat.
This is an interesting perspective that I haven’t thought of or considered.
Really now
Removed by mod
The only tool here is you bud.
I like that you specifically posted a right wing source that liberals spent years demonizing during Trump’s and Biden’s terms. It’s weird how right wing you people are just openly being.
Everyone the establishment doesn’t like is a Russian troll these days. Coincidence, or propaganda?
You don’t have the moral high ground you think you have. You can’t scare me with Russia when the US and many Western countries are guilty of enabling a genocide.
Here’s what the Financial Times wrote a year ago:
“We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,” said one senior G7 diplomat. “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.”
“What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza. Otherwise we lose all our credibility,” the senior G7 diplomat added. “The Brazilians, the South Africans, the Indonesians: why should they ever believe what we say about human rights?”
Just four weeks before the Hamas assault on Israel, leaders from the US, EU and western allies attended the G20 summit in New Delhi and asked developing nations to condemn Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian civilians in order to uphold respect for the UN charter and international law. Many of those officials told the Financial Times they have had the same argument read back at them in demands for condemnation of Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza, and of its decision to restrict water, electricity and gas supplies there.
source: https://www.ft.com/content/e0b43918-7eaf-4a11-baaf-d6d7fb61a8a5
archive: https://archive.is/TxkRb
They’re attacking Jill Stein because she’s running a campaign that will have absolutely no impact on the world except for enticing some number of would-be Harris voters to instead throw their votes away. If the Green Party were serious about change, they’d focus on races where they could actually win instead of actively causing harm to the party that is much more likely to actually do the things they say they want. Instead, they’ve basically outright stated that all they care about is hurting the Democrats. It’s a terrible electoral system that needs to be fixed, but until it is, third parties are always going to present a false option that effectively does the opposite of what their voters actually want.
Not only did the Democrats not deliver on the Green New Deal they promised, but they expanded the private prisons at the border https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/unchecked-growth-private-prison-corporations-and-immigration-detention-three-years-into-the-biden-administration
What does this have to do with anything? Yes, the Democratic Party is flawed. That doesn’t change the fact that voting Green will make my political desires slightly less likely, and will make my political fears slightly more likely, compared to voting for a Democrat.
I have an idea, how about everyone votes for whoever they like? Freedom of choice and all that. I personally don’t like racists and genociders, so Harris lost my vote and Trump never had it. I was actually willing to give Harris a chance after Biden dropped but she delivered one insult after another, she clearly doesn’t want my vote. Would you vote for someone who insults you or those you care about?
Of course anyone can vote for who they like, or not vote at all, no one’s saying otherwise. It’s Harris’s job to earn your vote, and she clearly hasn’t. But pushing third parties as the solution to any problem is going to do more harm than good until we get a better election system. It may feel better to vote for a party that more clearly aligns with your positions, but if they have no path to actually acquiring any power to make change, you’re doing nothing while feeling like you did something. Changing the policies of a flawed party that actually has power is much harder, and yes, there might be compromise or half-measures, but that’s an infinitely more productive path. (More productive than that is doing direct action outside of the electoral system entirely, but both things can be done at the same time.)
It’s not “doing nothing” it’s demonstrating that their “viable” candidate is not an acceptable candidate. You’re demonstrating that the people reject them and that we have the power to prevent their victory, putting pressure on them to earn the votes of the people, necessitating changes to be made and concessions given if they wish to stay in power.
Unless they can convince all of you folks to abandon your blocs and “vote blue no matter who”. Then they have free license to do whatever they want, and to let the other side continue being the bogey man that gets you to the polls, because without you your bloc is too weak to affect their victory.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy; by saying you are too weak to effect change and arguing as much instead of demonstrating in solidarity with other objectors that genocide is a policy that will guarantee defeat for the Democrats now and in the foreseeable future, because the other side is unacceptable (which implies that your side to you, even if genocidal, is acceptable, because of the comforts you believe they are promising over the other side), then you yourself are participating in the thing that is making you too weak to effect change and in the process throwing those people who are subject to the genocide under the bus in service of your own comfort.
Bernie Sanders was that candidate. He supports the election of Harris because he recognizes that it is necessary.
