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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Jill Stein is there so that people who want to vote, but are mad as fuck at the dems, have someone to vote for. Basically, she’s there to scare the dems (working, obviously). Will they be scared enough to adopt some better policies, and get those votes?
The spoiler effect is based on geometric proximity, not the quality of policy. They’re a waste of a vote, because they have no chance of winning.
If the greens want to do something they should work at the local level where they actually have a chance.
Absolutely nobody considering a vote for Jill Stein thinks she is going to win. This is a slice of the electorate that the dems haven’t won over yet, but could.
If we’re just repeating things, then I guess that’s what we’re doing.
The spoiler effect is based on geometric proximity, not the quality of policy.
Does policy not largely define the “geometric distance” between candidates?