“Federal Election Commission records show Stein paid $100,000 in July to a consulting outfit that has worked with Republican campaigns, as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential bid. The firm, Accelevate, is operated by Trent Pool. The Intercept reported that he appeared to be part of the mob that breached the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6., 2021. The Journal hasn’t independently verified the reporting.”
We must bring about glorious revolution, even if our methods aren’t particularly effective and millions suffer.
No you see they have a plan.
Its brilliance is in its simplicity!
Why do you believe folks voting for Stein would be likely Harris voters?
So if you look at the policy positions of a Green Party, it tends to align more closely with voters who would traditionally vote Democratic.
Here’s their own blurb from their website
Considering that the Republican Party uses the phrase “social justice warrior” as an insult and to this day field candidates that reject climate change, the idea that Republican voters might choose to vote for this party over their own seems less likely to me.
The Green Party is politically left of center, so it seems reasonable to me that the people that would vote for them would be more likely to come from the group of voters more likely to cast a ballot for Harris than trump.
If you look at the textbook positions, sure. But if you look at the activities of the Democratic Party while in power, you see some sharp deviations. Biden expanding oil drilling leases on public lands. Harris taking money from Crypto shills and other energy ravenous tech billionaires. Their hard-line opposition to immigration. Their continued endorsement of arms sales to Israel.
If you go back to the 2000 election with Nader and you look at Green turnout trends in Florida relative to party affiliation, you discover lots of GOP / Green crossover voting. Nearly as many Greens defected from the Bush Oil Family as the Gore camp. In fact, its the SJW and climate denialist rhetoric that turns died-in-the-wool Republicans into Green defectors on the regular.
But the dirty secret about Green voters (much like their Libertarian counterparts) is that they tend to win votes in districts and states where one party thoroughly dominates. You’ll find more Green Dems in bright Blue California and Minnesota and New York and Washington. You’ll find more Green Republicans in Texas and South Carolina and Utah and Ohio.
The platforms of the Green Party have been shared by both parties across the decades. And you can regularly find Greens who fell out of one party or the other precisely because of the drift.
What we’re seeing today is a large number of Arab American spilling out of the Democratic Party, because the Dems are abandoning even a semblance of support for a Rules Based International Order, with respect to Israel. That’s what has people freaked out about Jill Stein. She’s become a magnet for disaffected liberals.
But go back twenty years, to when John McCain was pushing a climate change bill and George Bush Jr was signing legislation full of EV car credits, and you can find liberal Republicans with Green frills. Go back farther than that and you can find Green Republicans in the Sierra Club and even Greenpeace. The Greens aren’t Left-of-Center. They’re simply platforming issues that the other two parties have abandoned.
I’m much more interested in your plan than whatever strawman you can make up about the voters whom Democrats have left on the table for objecting to the genocide they want to fund.
Focus on getting progressives into local and state offices so they can build experience necessary to successfully run for federal office. Vote lesser evil for president in the meantime to buy time for progressive to get that experience. In 10-15 years of diligent efforts we can get progressives into probably about a 1/3 of our congressional seats. At that point, a progressive presidential candidate with congressional experience stands an actual chance of winning the presidency, and will have the legislative support to actually accomplish their policy goals when they get there.
How does this differ from the plan 10-15 years ago? Should we not be seeing returns if lesser evil voting did anything other than ratchet us over to the right? Should a politician have to do anything to earn the votes that put them into office?
It doesn’t, we just haven’t been doing it. Progressives show up at mid terms in lower proportions than conservatives, we have to show up for every election, even the boring local ones. Governors and Senators become Presidents. If we want a progressive President, we need progressive Governors and Senators to nominate.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear: voting lesser evil is necessary for change but it is not sufficient. Again, the return on lesser evil voting is delaying the greater evil so that good can get into position. If we’re not using that delay to vote progressive into lower offices, then yes voting lesser evil accomplishes little else.
This isn’t a productive perspective. Lots of things should happen. You shouldn’t have to look both ways before crossing at a crosswalk when you have the light; but if you follow “should”, you’ll have the satisfaction of being in the right when you get hit by a car.
The point of your vote isn’t to reward candidates for having the right policies, the point of your vote is to protect your interests. You vote lesser evil for the same reason you lock your doors, to mitigate a worse outcome.
That’s not how evaluating a plan works.
Here, I’ve got a cure for cancer, shove pinecones up your ass.
You can determine that this plan is bad without having to have a cure for cancer.
Right, well you keep guaranteeing your vote for Democrats every year and attacking anyone that criticizes them for being ineffective and see how much that gets you, since their current platform and every election leading up to this one hasn’t been enough to prove that they don’t really care that much about defending progressive policy and will throw both it and their voters under the bus if they think it will help them tap into the republican base instead. Continue directing your ire at your fellow voters instead of using it to hold your elected representative’s feet to the fire. That definitely seems like a sound plan and totally isn’t more of what got us here in the first place 👍
It’s a nice straw man you’ve erected and if I did any of those things you might have some kind of point.
I didn’t attack anyone, I pointed out that this alternative plan is unlikely to bring about any substantive change either.
So you keep telling people to sit at home and I’ll wait for the glorious revolution, maybe if you shout down people and tell them to read more theory that’ll help. The American people are super into reading political theory.