So Stein is again working to get trump elected
Echoing this, if no candidate gets a majority of the electoral votes, then the decision goes to the house of representatives, currently majority Republican. Actually voting for Stein or another third party is unlikely to get them elected to office, but introduces multiple potential ways to get Trump back in office.
The Bernie approach of getting into the primaries introduces the opportunity to debate the establishment and better advocate for change from the front runner.
EDIT: Each state gets one vote in the house of representatives when electing the president, so the existing Republican majority doesn’t apply. This probably would make it easier for Trump to get elected because populated Democrat states have the same number of votes as less populated Republican states.
Let’s be real. Votes for third parties in already decided states such as California or Missouri only help promote in some small way a diversity of parties that the US sorely needs.
I think it’s only in battleground states where it would benefit someone to think more tactically about the use of their vote versus participating in the system as intended, i.e. voting for their preferred candidate.
I’m regularly struck by the literal insanity of politics, but this whole deal with Israel is a particularly notable example.
The fact of the matter is that we have no idea what Harris’s actual opinion of the situation is. Regardless of what it might actually be, she has to support Israel, which at this point means supporting a government of literal murderous psychopaths who are simultaneously carrying out a genocide in Gaza and a violent incremental illegal land grab in the West Bank while also brazenly trying to provoke, and drag the US into, a war with Lebanon or Syria or Yemen or Iran. And why does she have to support all of that patent evil? Because if she doesn’t, AIPAC will spend millions and millions of dollars trying to destroy her, like they already destroyed Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, for daring to have principles.
And what’s the likely net result of that? To elect a Republican, which is to say, a member of the party of actual antisemites.
They accuse Democrats of being antisemites merely for calling genocide genocide, and meanwhile, the actual antisemites - the people who comtinue to hold to the notion of Jews as evil, money-grubbing vermin who are conspiring to take over the world, are Republicans, even including Republicans in high office, like “Jewish space lasers” Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Think about how insane that is - a politician has to publicly support a genocidal regime or face being called an antisemite and having an Israeli advocacy group spend millions and millions of dollars to destroy her and instead elect the candidate from the party of actual Jew-hating antisemites.
And as if that isn’t enough, we have Jill Stein in the middle of it all, who, with zero chance of actually winning, is free to take the position that any rational person should take, and the position that the majority of the Democratic base takes - that genocide is genocide and is rightly condemned. And that then introduces the risk that she’ll draw off enough Democratic voters, merely by taking the position held by the majority, so the position that the Democratic candidate should take, that it will hand the election to the Republican - the candidate of the party of actual antisemites.
The whole thing is bludgeoningly insane. I don’t think anyone could’ve created such a grotesquely dysfunctional and actuslly counter-productive system if they’d deliberately set out to do it.
And yet that’s the world we live in - the world we’re forced to live in - a world warped by the literal insanity of a wealthy and powerful few.
It boggles my mind.
Two words: Citizen’s United
I mean, should money be speech, and thus campaign contributions protected by the first amendment? It’s kinda pants-on-head stupid, unless you want money to run things. Which some folks do, of course.
A 1% candidate isn’t haunting anyone.
Jill Stein is completely irrelevant.
Oh, ok, cool. Then the Democratic and Republican parties have nothing to fear from her.
So they should be fine with debating her and having her on the ballot. I mean, hey she’s “completely irrelevant,” right?
Being completely irrelevant, there’s no reason to waste time debating her, but if she meets the criteria for either I don’t think anybody cares.
Being completely irrelevant, there’s no reason to waste time debating her, but if she meets the criteria for either I don’t think anybody cares.
So what is threshold do you think she, or ANY 3rd party candidate, needs to meet to be considered worthy of a debate? Serious question. Because her party is the 4th biggest political party in the US. Behind Libertarians.
I don’t care about this. Until FPTP is eliminated, third parties are irrelevant.
third parties are irrelevant.
Then you have nothing to fear, nor do you have anything to be annoyed about, when it comes to the existence of 3rd parties and the voting for 3rd parties.
Yes, hence the “I don’t care about this.”
Yet, you do seem to care enough to have a conversation about it, and interact in this community thread about it. So I guess you care a little bit.
Do y’all in the Green Party have anything to show for yourselves past this person? I’ve never seen a local showing. It seems like y’all do nothing except run for president every four years, then vanish. I mean I know Republicans who do more for local conservation and green initiatives than y’all. Really.
Do y’all in the Green Party have anything to show for yourselves past this person?
The party has been around since the 1980’s, friend. Maybe you need to look up Ralph Nader. I know you are young and don’t know your political history, but maybe do some research before you engage in a debate about it. I mean, come on man, did you even Wikipedia?
The Green Party’s membership encompasses the fourth-highest percentage of registered voters in the United States, with a total membership of 234,120.
I’ve never seen a local showing.
Californians have elected 55 of the 226 office-holding Greens nationwide. Other states with high numbers of Green elected officials include Pennsylvania (31), Wisconsin (23), Massachusetts (18) and Maine (17). Maine has the highest per capita number of Green elected officials in the country and the largest Green registration percentage with more than 29,273 Greens comprising 2.95% of the electorate as of November 2006.[68] Madison, Wisconsin is the city with the most Green elected officials (8), followed by Portland, Maine (7).
As of February 2024, there are 144 elected officials who identify as Green Party.
So yes, there are Green Party members in local politics.
It seems like y’all do nothing except run for president every four years, then vanish.
We haven’t vanished. There are 144 elected officials who identify as Green Party in the USA. And the European Green Party one several prominent elections in Europe.
Feel free to look it up on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_of_the_United_States
And their website: https://www.gp.org/
You don’t have to like them. But they do exist. And according to Lemmy, they are really good at “spoiling” elections. lol
Uh huh.
I’m not “debating” you, I’m asking if you have anything to show for your party.
I know the supposed platform, and I know the presidential candidates. What I don’t know is why your candidate thinks anyone should give a shit about her when she’s nowhere to be found except when she’s deciding to run for president.
Either y’all aren’t doing anything worth celebrating or you’re bad at communicating your successes and both of those are pretty firm indictments of your ability to follow through on the national level with any of your stated goals. But that presumes any conviction in those stated goals, and again: I’m not sure I can think of any reason to think y’all have any such conviction.
I’m not “debating” you, I’m asking if you have anything to show for your party.
And I gave examples.
What I don’t know is why your candidate thinks anyone should give a shit about her when she’s nowhere to be found except when she’s deciding to run for president.
Well, I don’t have that issue with her. Nor do my friends who are voting for her.
Either y’all aren’t doing anything worth celebrating
there is not “y’all,” I don’t represent the party. I am simply voting for her. I can’t answer for the problems you seem to have with the party.
That’s outside my scope of expertise. They are the 4th largest political party in the US. I don’t have any control over their PR.
Brah, if you don’t like her, then don’t vote for her.
I do, so I am.
I think they were asking for actual green wins, policy or otherwise, not candidates who have run. I voted for Nader, fwiw, but I won’t be voting for stein
Yeah. That’s basically it. Demonstration of ground level impact and commitment. It’s difficult to imagine trusting a group with a national bureaucracy when they haven’t shown that they’re capable of that scale of operation. Unfortunately that capability matters more than the ideals.
Edit: but also it matters because it demonstrates the ideals in action in a tangible way.
“She could have said, ‘I hear you, we’re going to address this, and if you want it to get better, elect me instead of Donald Trump,’” Zahr told NBC. “But instead she suggested we want to help get Trump elected … as if we owe her something and she doesn’t owe us.”
This is the attitude of Dems. Vote for our candidate because if you don’t you’ll be sorry.
To be clear, I’m voting for Harris because the threat of another orange shitbag presidency is too great to ignore, but I’ll do so irritated that I don’t really have a choice.
This is the attitude of Dems. Vote for our candidate because if you don’t you’ll be sorry.
Yep. And the personal attacks I have gotten from posting this article here, have shown many Lemmy users to have the same attitude.
In fact, Lemmy’s are so mad that I am voting Green, they have being going into my communities and downvoting everything I post, even if not political. They’re even voting down my posts supporting elementary teachers who teach Special Education students. I mean, if Lemmy users wanna spend their day doing downvoting every post I write, it’s fine, but it’s really weird to me and just makes me laugh. BUT it does make me feel kinda important! lol
I totally respect and support your right to vote for Harris. But I just can’t, so that’s why I’m going Green.
Lemmy is one of the most intense echo chambers out there. It’s very funny that a self-professed anti-hierarchical, decentralized message board site like this falls in line so neatly behind whatever candidates the corporate media tells them to and then browbeats anyone who dares to consider alternatives. Americans’ refusal to vote third party plays a big role in why the two major parties are so completely unresponsive to the public’s interests and desires. They won’t win, of course, thanks to FPTP, but voting for them pressures the two parties to change their platform to win over their voters.
This is precisely why the corporate media is so invested in vilifying third party voters. Every election from now until the end of recorded history will be “the most important election ever” (or “the last election ever,” as they’ve been painting it recently) and anyone who refuses to vote for the lesser-of-two-evils candidate is a willful apostate who’s worse than a Trump voter. And the masses buy into it, and then it’s naked tribalism and hysteria from there.
100 percent agree with you! And you said it way better than I have been saying it!
Yeah apparently on Lemmy if you criticize Biden or Kamala you want trump to win. There’s no nuance of “hey maybe we should force a better choice than a genocide enabler who will stick to the status quo as it has been for the past 40 years and change nothing, or an orange more evil genocide enabler”
Like I absolutely don’t want trump as a president. I also absolutely don’t want my taxes and money going to kill innocent people. These are not two contradictory viewpoints but people don’t seem to understand that. Hell, even Kamala doesn’t seem to understand that based on her rhetoric.
I’m tired of the white house being concerned or disappointed by Israel. If your child concerned or disappointed you so much and didn’t change his or her behavior, you would put in some consequences. Otherwise you would be a shitty parent. That simple.
