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.
Register to vote: https://vote.gov/
Exactly this. That woman is always vapor until an election year.
John Oliver convinced me that Jill Stein is a dumbfuck back in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3O01EfM5fU
At her peak, Jill Stein broke just above 1%.
Jill Stein is a russian asset
Supporting evidence for the 3 downvotes ATM:
Putin’s Shill Stein wants Nato disbanded, the US to give up their SC veto, and revoke weapons to help Ukraine defend itself while simultaneously forcing ‘peace’ (subjugation) negotiations with russia.
More context:
- Emir Kusturica is a propagandist filmmaker quoted as saying “if I was Russian I would vote for him”. He also supports Russian annexation of Crimea.
- Willy Wimmer was a Right-wing German politician who in his retirement has effectively become a far-right conspiracy theorist that regularly posts to the Epoch Times.
For those that don’t understand how the Electoral College + FPTP voting works, voting for her means helping donald become president due to the spoiler effect.
Just missing Lavrov and you’d have all four horsemen in the same pictureNvm i mistook Ivanov for Medvedev, only two horsemen at this table with Jill Stein
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.
Yeah you’re right. Their brainless response normally is to just shift focus away from trump as if he is irrelevant to the conversation
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?
I’m still hearing about Tulsi from two people. Insert eyeroll here.
I downvoted because disbanding nato is a good thing and arming an authoritarian government is bad.
They are rigged and corrupted for sure just like every popular politician but let’s not forget that NATO is a terroristic organization and that producing or sending cluster munition to an authoritarian government is not a good thing.
We should take everyone into account for chilling with russian leaders and mafiosi not just jill stein
Notice the group you call a terrorist organization grows when the nation they say they are organized to protect against invades other countries. If Russia wants NATO to go away all they have to do is stop invading counties and it will slowly dissolve and disappear. They invaded Georgia in 2008 and the world didn’t do enough, they invaded Crimea (Ukraine) in 2014 and the world didn’t do enough. 2022 they set out to invade Ukraine again, and finally the world started to do more. 3 strikes. Now NATO grows because counties in the region don’t feel safe from Russia. If they stop being a threat, counties in the region will slowly leave NATO.
History started before 2008.
deleted by creator
A spoiler is something that only exists in the mind of Liberals, even if there were no 3rd party candidates running, we would not vote for your right wing pieces of shit. There’s a better chance you would vote for a Republican than any of us would vote for either right wing party.
A spoiler is something that only exists in the mind of Liberals
Math. You’re disagreeing with math. Or are completely unaware of how FPTP voting works (I know this isn’t the case).
Math has nothing to do with the fact that we are not Democrats, so we would not vote for a Democrat. That’s like trying to say math is the reason you won’t vote Republican
You don’t have to have be a democrat to vote against fascists.
I’m not a democrat, but I plan to use my vote strategically, since fascists have a propensity toward murdering their ideological opponents. You can call the DNC fascist all you want, many do, but I’m less inclined to believe that they’ll try to murder leftists vs the US right wing.
Your ideological purity will not save you from a fascist’s bullet.
You’re talking as if the Democrat Ratchet effect is not able to fascism. In case there’s any question, yes, it does
Be that as it may, I’ll still use my vote strategically to ensure that the slide toward fascism is as slow as possible, personally. I am not an accelerationist. I feel that I can more effectively perform direct actions, agitate, and educate others in service of leftist ideology during that time. Ideals without sound strategy are little more than masturbatory.
Math literally has everything to do with it. There are entire branches of mathematics dedicated to figuring out ideal voting systems.
I’m not making any distinction between non votes and 3rd party votes. From a purely electoral perspective a Stein voter is the same as someone who doesn’t show up. This is why people are rightfully frustrated with them. It’s a pretty simple concept and the only response is usually “not uh!”.
People are upset with 3rd party voters because they won’t fall in line and do what the DNC wants them to do. The DNC feels entitled to every vote not cast for a Republican. If they want our vote they need to earn it, and they never have.
I don’t care about the reasoning you make for your actions. We’re talking about the results of those actions.
You will affect the race in one of two ways regardless of what you do. You will either benefit Party A or Party B, those parties being the two largest parties, aka Democrats and Republicans. Non votes and 3rd party votes benefit the smaller party, which is the GOP. This is an absolute fact within a FPTP system, even if you can’t accept it because of the obvious implications.
If you feel the GOP has done more to earn your support, that’s your call. I just think that’s some next level dumbassery.
Third parties are not bothering to earn your votes either. They put in zero work except for presidential elections.
A spoiler is something that only exists in the mind of Liberals
Dude, I already showed it to you.
Election report for election "Plurality 2 Candidates" Total people: 1047 11% of people supported the winner. Kruger - 112 votes - WINNER Sahl - 111 votes
Election report for election "Plurality 3 Candidates" Total people: 1047 10% of people supported the winner. Sahl - 109 votes - WINNER Kruger - 93 votes Maikol - 91 votesThe overlap of two circles means there will be an area shared in between. That’s the math, you can’t get around that.
Because it’s bullshit
“It’s bullshit because it proves I’m full of shit and I don’t actually have an argument against it.”
This is the modus operandi of conservatives, libertarians, and anyone trying to put forward a disingenuous argument
That’s cute, That your binary thinking assumes a ballot critique of one thing is automatically support of the other.
it’s bullshit because it doesn’t prove anything.
And yet none of you have been able to explain how or why it doesn’t prove anything. Only making assertions that it doesn’t.
Really now? Please explain exactly how it’s “bullshit.” Just claiming it’s bullshit is not sufficient.
Removed by mod
You’re disagreeing with math. Congratulations, you’ve unlocked the dunce award.
Yet you didn’t provide explanation for why it’s bullshit. Because you know it isn’t. It’s right in front of you.
We are not Democrats, so we will not vote for Democrats. They could show all the fucking graphs in the world, And wouldn’t change the fact that we are not Democrats, so we do not vote for Democrats.
You’re basically saying that there is zero overlap in the venn diagram of third party voters and blue voters, yet you make efforts to convince blue voters to go third party. You know damn well that there is overlap between third party voters and blue voters, otherwise you’d never talk to them.
Even if you personally would never vote blue, third party voters are not a monolith, there are third party voters that are closer to the DNC than you are.
Lmao. I bet you always got your tests back face down.
Given the hypothetical that Kamala and Donald are the only 2 available to vote for, who would you prefer win?
That is not hypothetical. While you can literally vote for anyone, you can effectively only vote for one or the other. This is not due to a lack of idealists, it’s by design of the system
Ssssshhhh… You’re interrupting my socratic argument to shut this f’ing guy up.
Who is this “we” you keep referencing?
It’s pretty much completely impossible for a third party candidate to ever win. You have to get 270 (just over half) of all the electoral votes. If any third party made a huge amount of headway it’d still be almost impossible to take enough votes from the repubs or democrats to hit 270, and anything less than 270 means the House gets to decide who becomes president. Obviously, the house filled with democrats and Republicans, would never select the third party candidate.
They dont have to win, just steal enough votes from one of the other parties to affect the election
Correct. I’m pointing out the complete futility of anything other than that.
If Left-Wing Third Parties are serious, they will start by running their candidates as spoilers in the Democratic Primary and appealing to voters to listen and add their platforms to the list of priorities to push the Dems on. They’d simultaneously work hard to get Ranked Choice passed nation-wide as that system is the most compatible with our country’s political system. Once they get that passed, they would join efforts to reform the Electoral College so it doesn’t require 270 votes, an then implement a more effective voting system for President that ensures that left-wing voters don’t get a Right-Wing president elected voting for Third Party options. They would also push hard to win at the City, County, and State levels, as well as in the Congress, so the Jill Steins of the world have friendly legislators to rely on.
Ocasio-Cortez is right to call this out.
Did you just turn Success Kid into an angry/upset reaction? Rude!
I’m saving lives:
Honestly, yes. You can’t vote third party, and you can’t not vote, if you don’t want Trump in office. If you vote Third Party or stay home, you’re good with Trump being in office, which means you’re good with leaving minorities, non-Christians, transgendered people, and gay people up Project 2025 Shit Creek without a paddle. Given my wife is a Black bisexual Goth pagan, that means you want my wife to be hurt, and that pisses me the fuck off. And judging from the 15 other downvotes you have, I’m not the only one who feels that way.
Why would anyone vote 3rd party? They can just stay home and continue their nap.
Because to some their eternal purity is way more important than anything that could actually happen as a result of their actions. To throw your vote away in a protest that no party has ever cared about keeps your hands clean of any individual aspect of that party you don’t like and you can claim the moral high ground by “trying” to enact change, but at what cost to everything around you?
It’s like the cartoon of the people living in a cave after climate change ruins everything saying “at least for a short time we made a lot of money for shareholders.” except it would be “at least I didn’t vote for Genocide Joe.”
Because y’all claim to live in a democracy, so let people voice their opinions as votes.
“I refuse to make any compromises” is the OPPOSITE of democracy.
Look, if people feel very strongly about something, let them voice their opinion on it through a vote, as intended. That’s what democracy is for. If your democracy doesn’t work and always makes you vote strategically, making you disregard your own positions as a voter, then maybe your democracy isn’t really a democracy and you should start working on that. A strategically cast vote won’t magically repair your broken system. Anyway, compromises are for political parties and politicians, not for the average voter that just wants to voice their opinion.
What the fuck are you talking about, compromise and strategic voting are fundamental cornerstones of Democracy. Not some kind of failure.
Exclusively getting everything you want all the time is called autocracy.
I’d rather be able to vote for more then just the two parties. But I am also realistic and letting trump win so you can vote for someone who will never win is foolish.
AOC is correct indeed.
Well if she’s soooo unserious why would the Unicode consortium designate an emoji just for her?
🤡
I can’t tell if this is satire because people unironically talk about AOC like this.
AOC called Stein unserious, so the clown comment is about Stein.
Ohh ok yeah that makes more sense
I honestly had to think about it for a hot second first because people talk mad shit about AOC as you said
<astronaut gun meme>
It never was.
I made the mistake of voting for her in the primaries exactly once years ago as a naive teenager, and vowed never again once her “campaigning” expounded on what she actually stood for and how.
Green party… Plastic green, indeed.
Howie Hawkins was nice though (doesn’t mean I would have voted for him)
Go watch her breakfast club interview. So transparent that they are pandering with hollow buzz word mention. The hosts call her out pretty well. If they are real about an issue like ranked choice voting, then I want to see you become the face of that issue publicly for the next 4 years, until it’s passed into law through consensus and politicking, in a way that the green party clearly earns a place in a tangible victory.
You won’t, that’s not what you’re being funded for, but that’s what you’d do if you actually cared.
Stein is a clown.
A vote for stein is a vote for trump.
A vote for stein is a vote for trump.
no, it’s not. this is election misinformation
It absolutely is when you look at the reality of the situation. Stop spreading the 3rd party vote as a viable option misinformation. Where are these so-called 3rd party candidates in the local elections? With no local support, state assembly level, or Congress, these candidates would be useless as President.
It absolutely is
it is absolutely illegal to count a vote for stein as a vote for trump.
A vote for the green party is a vote for the green party. Stop trying to bend logic
Normally I’d agree with you. But the Green party is rather transparently not actually trying to get elected. They have the same level of seriousness as RFK who publicly stated he’ll only keep his name on the ballot in states where it helps Trump.
If a third party did the leg work, spent a decade getting people elected to congress in every state, and then showed up in the presidential elections I’d be all for it. and before you whine about convenience, I’ve been saying the same thing to Libertarians and Greens for 2 decades now. They either aren’t serious, or they’re incompetent.
Being incompetent is still better than being evil
Is that what it is though? Is there evidence that it’s incompetence and not enemy action? Because getting paid by the Russians and being at dinner with Michael Flynn and Putin is a pretty big leap in the direction of enemy action.
My shoe lace broke the other day and it’s been a real pain to tie them up since. I was thinking about going to the store today but I have so many other errands to do.
So you have nothing more than whataboutism. Can you stick to the topic at hand or are we going to discuss the effect of slavery next?
Change FPTP or stfu.
Yeah, I feel like a serious candidate for president would know how many Representatives are in the House.
What I want to know how they can they perform when you don’t let them at debates? As I said before, they didn’t allow people within their own party to debate such as Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich for not having enough money, I don’t see what the purpose of the party is.
If they had representatives in the house they could push their right to speak at debates. Senators even more so. Give them 5 senators and 21 representatives, that’s 5% of the legislature rounding generously, and then when they can’t speak at debates it’s something the two major parties should be ashamed of. As it stands now, people care about the parties that can win elections and I’m sorry but the Green Party doesn’t win elections, neither does the libertarian party, the constitution party, or the communist party. The greens and libertarians have both had moments of glory in which case they won the election for the major party they most disagreed with. And that’s coming from a fan of Nader, I think he did amazing work with the department of transportation.
The debates define rules ensuring only serious candidates join the debate - third parties need enough votes to be in the race. I’m aware that I’m letting them off the hook, but I don’t know a better solution. While it would be better to include third party candidates, we also don’t want many non-serious ones
Kucinich and Gravel? Dude, what year do you think it is?
There’s not much to go on since there’s been 2 Democratic Party debates since 2008. Gravel was a 2020 Presidential candidate.
