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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You pulled out your Facebook memes to say you wanted to break the two party system by voting third party. Nothing about my response is trying to address whether you should be voting, but your chosen action is stupid and has no potential to accomplish what you say you want to do.
Your username may be ironic, but outsourcing expressing feelings to a vague and not quite appropriate meme response rather than actually trying to say what you think and defend your personal opinions is one of the big reasons people shit on Boomers. Granted it’s a step up from my old conservative acquaintances on account of not also being in service of the most vile opinions humans espouse, but it’s just as tired and unwelcome.
Jill Stein supports ranked choice voting, Kamala Harris doesn’t even mention it in her platform.
Jill Stein says things and then does nothing to actually make them happen, like a lot of grifters. Weird how anti-establishment people can be so rightfully skeptical of Democratic politicians and hangers on, but then believe hook line and sinker that non-establishment voices are all in it for the ideology.
And because Kamala Harris doesn’t mention ranked choice voting, somehow that’s magically supposed to happen?
It doesn’t take a meme to find the flaw in that reasoning.
I don’t expect the Democratic establishment to implement it, that’s why the Greens should actually get some state reps elected. Or even just compete in the places where they do have ranked choice voting. There’s plenty of state level races that don’t need a lot of money to be competitive. My rep was reelected with 3,000 votes.
But voting for Jill Stein for president isn’t going to do anything. She has literally zero chance of winning, doesn’t seem to even put in the effort to understand the position she’s theoretically trying to obtain, and just pops up every four years to perpetually lose elections while grifting money away from rubes.
You are describing the Democrats not Jill Stein.