Cornel West recently announced he is running for president as a Green Party candidate, challenging President Biden in 2024. Some Democrats worry that West’s candidacy could split the progressive vote and help reelect Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee again, as Jill Stein’s campaign did in 2016. However, West has supporters who see his run as a way to push Biden further left on issues. Still, even some progressives acknowledge West could hurt Biden’s chances of reelection. Democrats argue that beating Trump and enacting progressive policies requires electing Democrats first.
“In 2016, the Green Party played an outsized role in tipping the election to Donald Trump,”
They’ll blame anything other than the facts of Hillary being unlikable and Wasserman-Schulz being incompetent. Johnson took 3x as many votes from the Republicans as Stein took from the Democrats. In the end, Hillary was an electoral dud and Wasserman-Schulz’ mishandling of the primaries led to faithless electors.
Yes, ultimately it’s the establishment’s philosphy of trying to scrape by on what crumbs of constituents they can pick up from the right end of the spectrum. It’s a completely unnecessary high-wire act that they do all just to make sure their corporate backed candidates are palletable by comparison.
Same high risk, short-sighted strategy they played during the last midterms where they helped prop up all these absolute loons in the GOP so that they would have opponents who, only by shocking contrast, made their own milquetoast candidates look appealing.
In those scenarios even when you win you lose because you give these wingnuts a platform and their ideas spread, undermining the fabric of the electorate even if you got a short-term win out of it.
It’s very frustrating that Dems learned nothing from Trump’s win, and will flirt with plunging us into literal fascism just to ensure the country doesn’t move towards a centered, progressive direction.
My first thought was; did Jill Stein’s 2016 campaign have any real impact on the result?
Looking at this table of results implies that if all Stein voters had voted for Clinton, then maybe Clinton would have won Michigan (final EC result is still 290:248), but the contests elsewhere either weren’t close enough, or didn’t have enough Green voters to matter. Looking at that table, it’s clear that the Libertarians had a much bigger impact.
Ranked. Voting. Please.
Absurd that a progressive candidate entering the race can somehow be a bad thing.
So, like 2016 DNC wants to keep the status quo, and won’t bend at all. At least this time the actual issue isn’t on the same ticket, and they can’t force the ticket. I honestly don’t think stein was their problem. Bernie was. And Clinton (she is wildly disliked by MANY) herself. But it was the DNC treatment of Bernie that cost them, not the third party ticket votes. At least imo.
Personally I’m excited to see people running, who share my views, more than any “mainstream” candidate ever has.
Instead of “just leaving this here”, how about you actually clarify what you’re implying? It sounds like you’re accusing Jill Stein of being a Russian asset, and I think it’s really irresponsible to make this kind of accusation in a vague way that gives you plausible deniability.
These days Green Party is code for Kremlin Asset. Just look to where Jill Stein contested 2016 results and Gemany’s green party actions in trying to stamp out support for Ukraine.
Just look to where Jill Stein contested 2016 results and Gemany’s green party actions in trying to stamp out support for Ukraine.
i’m not sure what these two things have to do with each other, or why either is indicative of being a “Kremlin asset” when the more logical explanation for both is just that Green parties are and have historically been full of people with idealistic political analysis. sure, Stein could be bought off by Russia or something―but i feel like it’s a lot more likely she’s just a weird person with ill-informed takes (she’s basically a soft-antivaxxer and think Wi-Fi has health effects on children’s brains) and that’s why she does weird political things.
