Recently, AOC followed up her objectively dishonest appearance at the DNC with an ig love where she answered questions/platformed democratic talking points. During that stream, she directed pointed criticism at Jill Stein and portrayed the green party as a whole as self-serving opportunists.
Since then, that narrative has been taken up as a major talking point across liberal and pro-capitalist left circles on social media, including on this site. This was Jill's response.
Well unfortunately, they are self serving opportunists. AOC’s doing a bad job here but the Green Party in America is less than useless right now. They make no effort to build power and only pop up during the general election. They don’t do anything. Their strategy is bad. They want that 5% of the vote so they can be on national ballots, but do virtually nothing on a local or state level. it’s a top down approach that will never work.
If you’re not gonna vote for Harris, you may as well just not vote for president and just focus on down ballot stuff. There’s truly no good to be done by throwing a vote to Jill Stein.
Yeah I don't know why you're being downvoted. Jill Stein doesn't give a damn about Americans or Palestinians (though I think her presence at protests is very important). She only shows up every 4 years to run for president while knowing that her election bid is taking away votes from a Democrat president (which is particularly impactful since Trump came into play). Since 2012, she quite literally hasn't run for anything but president. If she cared about making an impact, she would've been running for local or state positions. She also never speaks about other Congressional happenings - didn't say anything about the progressive members of Congress who were running for reelection - and has taken money from Lockheed Martin (2016) and invested in companies that invest in Big Oil. But oh wait, she advertises herself as the "greater good"?
Jill Stein is just as corrupt as other politicians and lies through her teeth about it. AOC rightfully called her out. Vote for Jill Stein if that must be your prerogative, but don't put her on a pedestal she didn't do anything to deserve.
Yeah to me it’s like “I hate this bad thing so therefore I’m going to now get really into this useless unrelated thing.” People, understand how power works in America. Tossing your vote to someone who will not win or isn’t how to change anything. It’s not even the act of voting for someone other than Harris that’s frustrating, like whatever. It’s the people online who are acting like Jill Stein has any remote chance of accomplishing anything. Protest vote, sure. But to actually buy into this to me is extremely unserious. Research your candidates before holding them up on pedestals.
I don’t want to pop your bubble, but republicans and democrats can’t get shit done either. Seems strange to discredit the Geen Party for something the 2 main parties are guilty of themselves.
Short of mass change in elections over the course of a decade or so, voting third party does nothing to address the 2 main parties. Let alone put a stop to the two party system.
To put a stop to the two party system, we need to end first past the post voting. First past the post means that whoever has the most votes wins, with or without a majority. So, it's strategically advantageous to bundle interests together until parties have a reliable chance of winning 50% + 1 votes. i.e. it's mathematically advantageous for numerous parties to join with similar parties until there are only 2. Changing the sort of voting that's used is necessary to address this.
The other big issue is the electoral college. 23% of the people can override a united 77% to elect a president. There are various arguments about why this is and how/whether to address it, but it's definitively undemocratic.
And, that doesn't even touch on gerrymandering, money in politics, disenfranchisement, et al.
I hate the two major parties. I don't want either of them. All voting third party does is ensure less votes for candidates more aligned with one's own beliefs. It sucks. It's shitty. It's the political reality in the US.
Yes, hold politicians and parties accountable for shitty positions and policies. Make sure the actions one takes don't indirectly enable worse positions and policies on principle.
Millions of people have benefited from the work Democrats on the environment, healthcare, education, etc. to ignore this facts is childish and pathetic.
I’ve been involved with leftist politics for most of my life at this point. I’ve seen this argument, that the Democrats and Republicans are just the same and no one gets anything done every four years and I just think it’s garbage.
One party wants to round up trans people and the other doesn’t. One supports unions and the other doesn’t. One supports student debt relief and the other doesn’t. One wants to push through abortion protections into law and the other doesn’t. One wants to fire teachers for being gay and the other doesn’t. One wants to ban IVF treatment and the other doesn’t. One wants universal pre K and the other doesn’t. One wants a child tax credit and the other doesn’t. One wants a new homeowner tax credit and the other doesn’t. One wants to roll back environmental protections and the other doesn’t. One wants to break up monopolies and the other doesn’t. One supports Christian fascism and the other doesn’t. Democrat policies are a pretty livable baseline to work up from, Republicans want you to be dead. I can go on but I’m at work.
Like, I know the Democrats aren’t moving fast enough on this stuff but acting like it’s all the same is baloooooney. There’s major, major differences between the parties that hold power in America. On Israel, the Democrats do largely suck. When it comes to Israel, we are largely dealing with a uni-party set-up. But I guarantee you Republicans will be worse on everything else. I also think Harris is pushable. How people campaign, the questions they answer, the scripted way they answer them is all calculated to get the most people possible to vote for them. It’s not official foreign policy, it’s vague platitudes. My thinking with regard to this election is that we get someone in power who at the very least doesn’t want us dead or deported, and continue to push. Pressure politics doesn’t end after the election. The only time politicians are lobbyable isn’t while they’re running for office. To think that is to not have understanding of how politics work.
And if you don’t like it this cycle, don’t vote by all means but to pretend that Jill Stein, a caught-red-handed scam artist, is the person to lead us out of how US politics works is just unserious.
This is an objectively untrue smear. They do plenty of organizing on the local and state level. They don't have the coffers of the capitalist class to back them up or the media apparatus, so it's astronomically more difficult AND you don't hear about it when it does happen. Look at the legal efforts of Democrats to drown them if you don't believe me.
If you live in a solid red/blue state, there is 0 downside to casting a vote to get the Green Party across that 5% threshold to qualify for federal matching funds.
AOC is a spineless sellout who dodges every opportunity to represent the working class and victims of empire. She should be agitating, not sheepherding/defusing revolutionary potential among the rank and file.
But there’s no revolution coming. It’s America. It’s a college Marxist fantasy. We’ve been historically, notably-around-the-world, not a revolutionary culture. If it didn’t happen at the many, many more substantial chokepoint periods in history before this, it’s not happening now. Things are never actually bad enough here to make it preferable to staying as is. Most people get to go home and watch TV, even if they’re poor.
And why would you want the Green Party to get federal matching anyway? They’re bad at what they do. They’re a shell of what they were 25 years ago. They’re awful organizers. Money wouldn’t fix that, it would just be higher amounts not going to local and state elections, and more money going to useless general election campaigns into the future.
Think about how much money is spent trying to quash labor/any popular movement. For that reason alone, you are wrong. The ruling class will give minor concessions to placate Americans until they can no longer. "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen" etc etc.
It DID happen at many other substantial chokepoints in history.
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u/isawasin Non-Jewish Ally Sep 05 '24
Recently, AOC followed up her objectively dishonest appearance at the DNC with an ig love where she answered questions/platformed democratic talking points. During that stream, she directed pointed criticism at Jill Stein and portrayed the green party as a whole as self-serving opportunists.
Since then, that narrative has been taken up as a major talking point across liberal and pro-capitalist left circles on social media, including on this site. This was Jill's response.