Look, whatever you think of Jill Stein, she can only be a threat to democrats because they are vulnerable to arguments from the left. If you don’t want to be vulnerable from the left, adopt some of their popular ideas. Putin isn’t tricking Americans into being anti genocide, or into wanting universal health care.
She isn’t so much making arguments from the left, but arguments from fantasy land. She thinks wifi is bad for kids brains and that we can stop using fossil fuels AND nuclear by 2030. Most of what she says simply had no basis in reality.
No, but why would you trust the word of someone who makes those arguments?
If she thinks wifi may cause cancer, that we can totally phase out fossil fuels with no loss in quality of life by 2030, that we should phase out nuclear energy, and that we should entertain vaccine skepticism… Why should I even bother to listen to an anti science quack like her?
I want the genocide to end. I want someone in power who wants it to end and has a plan to make it end. Everything Jill Stein has said suggests to me she has no idea how reality actually works, nor that she has any ideas on how to achieve her stated goals. She’s just virtue signaling.
Now, a good leader can’t do or plan everything. They aren’t going to come up with every solution. That’s what they have advisors and like-minded allies in Congress for. If Stein was elected, she would have no fellow Greens in Congress, and we have no guarantee that she’d actually pick experts as her advisors – I’d actually expect the contrary from someone who thinks Wi-Fi causes cancer. But we don’t really know because the Green Party is utterly ineffectual and just cosplays every 4 years.
You’re missing the point. Nobody has to trust her word. She doesn’t have to be right about everything, she just has to be correct on this particularly important issue. Nobody thinks Jill Stein is going to win. Nobody. So they don’t have to imagine how she would implement her platform. It is irrelevant.
The problem for the democrats is that they are so WRONG on this one thing (genocide), that a certain subset of their potential voters can’t bring themselves to vote dem. Some of those voters may be bluffing and some may not be. Dems will roll the dice and hope for the best, rather than come out against genocide (my prediction).
So how do you know that she’s actually against genocide and not just saying it to get some support? If nobody has to trust her word, then why believe her there?
What has she done? Is she organizing demonstrations to protest against Israel and in favor of a cease fire? Is she using her party apparatus to fundraise and donate 100% of proceeds to Gaza aid? Is she trying to speak with Biden, Blinken, or even Democrat congressional members who agree with her?
Or is she just lazing on Twitter and saying how awful it is while also excusing Russia’s casus belli into Ukraine?
This whole thing is symbolic of her failure, lack of seriousness, and grifting. She isn’t actually doing anything for the causes she claims are super important and her top priority. She’s just being a Twitter activist and saying she’s very concerned. Stein doesn’t do things. She says things. Her actions don’t reflect any convictions.
How many times can I tell you that you’re missing the point. None of what you said matters! When Biden or Harris can barely even pretend to be against genocide, and continue to be responsible (via their current positions of power) for arming the Israelis, that is an acute emergency. The only reason that a potential dem voter is considering voting for Stein instead, is that, #1: she’s on the ballot, and #2: she’s against the genocide.
Any of your attacks or criticisms of her are irrelevant as long as those two things are true, or until Harris makes a drastic change to her policy.
Sure. Even plenty of dem voters! But just to be clear, do you think that the WiFi issue or the genocide issue is costing democrats more potential votes?
The no fossil fuels by 2030 one definitely is. Mostly she is drawing both-siders who think (incorrectly) that both sides are just as bad as each other.
I do think RCV would be a better system than what we have now, but I have very little confidence that it could ever be implemented without some loopholes that would essentially undermine it.
I do have that concern but based on how RCV has worked in some real elections my concerns with it a major enough that it might be worth it to advocate for a different system. I don’t want electoral reforms as a whole to go down because of imperfections with RCV.
She can only be a threat to democrats in a first past the post voting system.
The Green party doesn’t run on its policies. They’ve opposed nuclear for decades, and we’d be having a very different conversation about global warming if they hadn’t basically won there. They have opposed WiFi and cell phone radiation as “cancer causing”, and have supported homeopathy. If they ran on their policies, they would find a dwindling number of people on the left who actually support them, because they’re vestigial loons concocted in a 1960s hippie lab.
The Green party runs on being the only party on the left that’s bigger than almost nothing. That’s it, that’s all they do.
I can imagine that they at least attempt to. I don’t really understand what you’re getting at though. Given their place in the American political landscape, they don’t really have to. Democrats on the other hand, given their position, have to be able to defend all of their policies on the merits. That’s what this whole conversation is about-- democrats mad at the left for making them defend the indefensible.
Democrats do not support Genocide, and the war in Gaza is not clear cut. First, who started it? Hamas started it. They and Netanyahu want this war. They want to grind each other down so the loser is dust and the winner is weakened so whoever else is out there (Iran for Israel, the USA for Hamas and their supporters) can come in and mop up and finish the job.
Suppose Harris announces tomorrow that she’s going to leave Israel out to dry. What happens? Russia promptly moves in and offers Israel guns, missiles, bombs, and fuel, and promptly accuses the USA of supporting Genocide. They and their Green Party USA useful idiots (complete with Stein sharing a table with Putin) are already claiming that the USA is supporting Genocide, but they’d just shift it over to the Israelis, which would be a correct statement in that situation. We’d come out looking bad.
And if you think the Green’s ratfucking America is bad, imagine how people of Jewish decent, especially moderates and nationalists, might respond to it. Considering they represent up to 5% of the voting populations, and have lots of friends, leaving Israel to hang out to dry would likely lose far more voters than cowtowing to the anti-“Genocide” faction would gain the Dems.
But calling Democrats mass-murderers is easy to do because people are dumb. All we can do is remind everyone that if you vote Green instead of Blue on Election Day, you’re going to get Red on Inauguration Day, and Project 2025 up the Back Entrance.
Yours is the old, tired shit. I see you trying to shift the rhetorical focus. “Genocide is bad, so now shift to denying the genocide, or at least justifying it.” If Israel is justified, then this issue just evaporates! Right? Except the whole world knows that Israel is unjustified-- not just in this moment of slaughter, but for many years before as well. Peruse the decades of UN votes where only the US defended Israel’s crimes.
Yes, there are many Zionist Jews in the US, and there are also many Jews in the US that are horrified by Israel’s destruction of Gaza. I have marched with some in support of Palestinian lives. Are there more Zionist or non-zionist Jewish votes to be had in the US? I honestly do not know. On the one hand, that is a political consideration, but it is also a cynical one. People should look to their leaders to defend just principles.
Your fantasy of Russia moving to replace the US as Israel’s patron is… wild.
Maybe if you read my comments, you wouldn’t be confused.
They’ve opposed nuclear for decades, and we’d be having a very different conversation about global warming if they hadn’t basically won there. They have opposed WiFi and cell phone radiation as “cancer causing”, and have supported homeopathy. If they ran on their policies, they would find a dwindling number of people on the left who actually support them, because they’re vestigial loons concocted in a 1960s hippie lab.
I am reading your comments, but I am still missing your point. Nobody that votes for the Greens in the US thinks they are in any danger of winning and outlawing WiFi.
Kamala and Walz are more left-leaning than any dem ticket in ages. If the purpose of the Green party is to move the democrats left, then they should drop out to reward them for moving left.
Why would they stop now in that case? “More left-leaning than any dem ticket in ages” is not a very high bar. Shit, it’s so low, you can’t even slip “opposes genocide” under it!
I mean I have to agree that it’s disgusting and pathetic that almost every western mainstream political party is complicit and the rest are silent at best.
But, if you can stand me saying it, I think we actually have a chance to change the party. A Dem ticket like this is a once in lifetime event. If they lose I would be surprised if I ever see one this good again in my lifetime. If they get in, and if they get in with a strong majority, I can see it fundamentally changing the party. Every dem who blames the left for losing elections will turn to dust instantaneously ( don’t fact check me on this ).
I don’t really know what effect it’ll have because I’m just some guy. But I think this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I think it could fundamentally change the DNC. It could disempower the right of the party and bring leftist ideas into the political mainstream. It won’t be perfect, but it could be something. It could be huge.
In France, Left-leaning parties got together and decided which ones had the best chance in each ‘district’ of winning, and the other parties would drop out. They did this to ensure that the Le Pen led Fascist party didn’t have a chance of winning. Sure, the aftermath hasn’t been pretty, but no neo-Nazis running the country.
Here in the USA, we should be doing the same thing, except the Green Party isn’t in this to win it. They’re in it to throw bombs. They’re in it to disrupt the ‘evil Democrats’. And they have help. Jill Stein was photographed sitting down with Putin, who really benefits if we’re ruled by Fascist Republicans. Republicans have been caught propping up the campaigns of alternative Leftist parties. And even Netanyahu is hoping Jill Stein pulls enough votes from Kamala Harris so that Donald Trump wins.
As always. This is a School SGA election, we’re the 51 Nerds arguing amongst ourselves, and the 49 Jocks, including the Book Girl who is pretending to be one of us, are watching as we argue our way into handing the SGA to the Jocks, so they can cancel Book Club, Chess Club, D&D Night, and everything else we support, because we’re too busy arguing with each other to realise that the only way we beat them is by delivering at least 49 votes to Nerd Boy on Election Day.
==================== Reposted as this shit keeps being relevant ====================================
This poster would have you believe that your vote cannot result in you getting the worst possible outcome. Allow me to make it clear that yes, you can screw yourself and those you care about if you make the wrong choice on your vote.
Let’s take a class of High School students. The class is pretty evenly divided between Jocks (49) and Nerds (51), and there’s an election for the SGA coming up. Looking at the numbers, it looks like the Nerds have a good chance of winning, by two votes, but let’s say that this isn’t as clear as the numbers show.
The candidates are pretty distasteful for a lot of students at the school. On the Nerds’ side is a geeky boy, with square glasses, buck teeth, and a taste for pocket protectors. This kid is stereotypical Nerd, with the personality to match. He’s vaguely unpalatable, being too much into D&D and video games, but he’s also really damn smart, and his platform are things the Nerds would really like – pushing the school to fund after-school activities like Book Swap, the D&D Club, Debate Team, Chess Club, and so on.
On the Jock’s side is a pretty blonde cheerleader, the Homecoming Queen and heart-throb for many a boy in that school. But she’s a massive jerk, with an entitlement streak a mile wide, known for throwing temper tantrum(p)s when she doesn’t get her way, and a platform that includes taking all the money that would have gone to the nerdy after-school activities and putting it into prom and sports.
Of course, this stereotypical school of the 1980s will use the voting system used by the USA back in the 1980s, the classic voting system of First Past the Post, where all the votes are counted, and at the end, the one with the most votes wins.
In a 49 to 51 election, it’s clear that the Nerds win by a squeaker, but that’s not how elections work in the USA, and Cheerleader has a secret weapon. Most of her friends are of course fellow cheerleaders, dance team members, and athletes. But counted among her number is a bookish girl who is good with her studies, someone that were you to glance at her, you’d assume she’s with the Nerds. But she and Cheerleader have known each other since they were toddlers, and while Bookish Girl is smart, she’s also desperate for attention and acceptance. Bookish Girl is Cheerleader’s key to victory.
Cheerleader and Bookish Girl sit down after school and go over strategy. It’s clear that the numbers don’t support Cheerleader. All 51 Nerds are pretty sweet on that whole “Nerd After School Activities” thing. But they aren’t all as firmly dedicated to voting. For one thing, Nerd Boy is not well liked, with no social skills what-so-ever. He’s the kind of guy that doesn’t get a girl easily, and is awkward around girls and does things that can easily be styled as being demeaning and degrading to girls. Nerds are also notoriously flakey when it comes to making appointments when those appointments collide with what they would rather be doing.
Bookish Girl suggests three strategies to Cheerleader. They are:
Have one of Cheerleader’s groupies make an accusation against Nerd Boy that he inappropriately touched her. This should peel off two girls, who are known feminists.
Set up a nerdy game on the day of the vote, drawing out a handful of gamers.
Run Bookish Girl as a third party spoiler, who will say she stands for even more nerdy things so that she can peel off people who think Nerdy Boy can’t or won’t do the job.
Let’s say Election Day, 3 gamers skip out on the vote, one of the feminists stay home on the accusations, and the other, plus two more Nerds, vote for Bookish Girl. The tally of votes comes out to:
49 people vote for Cheerleader.
44 people vote for the Nerd Boy.
4 people do not vote.
3 people vote for the Bookish Girl.
Remember what the rules were? The one with the most votes wins. Those 7 kids ended up denying themselves and the 44 other kids the Nerd Boy’s platform. Hopefully they’ll enjoy the prom they’ll be excluded from and the constant bullying and teasing by the Jocks, because there will be no book club to go to, or D&D night to play in, or so on.
Really, all Cheerleader needed was for Bookish Girl to run, with a side dose of that other cheerleader’s accusation (let’s just call her Tara Reade…), and it’s 49 to 48 to 3, which is STILL a win for Team Jock. And that’s how narrow our elections are today.
You may think that Harris is a lockin to win, and you’re convinced by someone like this poster that you can vote third party. The problem is you can’t know how many Jocks and Nerds are in this school. Are there 55 Nerds and only 45 Jocks? Can you vote for the Bookish Girl over the Nerd Boy because Nerd Boy did something you don’t agree with in Junior High, or because he dissed your favourite pop culture icon, or he’s a GURPS player rather than a D&D player, or so on, and Bookish Girl is idealic? How will you feel when you wake up the next morning and come to school and see that Jocks won 45 to 44 to 11, and you and 10 other people are absolute dufuses who let the nerd activities go by the wayside?
And to make this REAL…how will you feel come the next morning if you wake up, see your State went to Trump, and thus gave Trump the 270 EVs he needed to win. Remember, Trump’s Jock-favoured activities can be read about in Project 2025…
In conclusion, you shouldn’t listen to dufuses like this poster. We saw what happened last time we let them poison our minds. Your vote CAN get you the absolute worst outcome, and the only people who want that to happen are accelerationists and Trump Plants. I’ll leave it to you to determine what THIS poster is.
Politics works very differently in France. There, in a multiparty parliamentary system parties often make temporary alliances together in order to form a functioning legislature. This is great for the smaller parties because they get a chance at real political leverage for their constituents. “You want to block the Nazis’ legislative agenda? Fine, but you must agree to stop selling weapons to Israel.”
The closest thing we have to such leverage in the US, is the ‘threat’ of 3rd (or “spoiler” if you prefer) parties. Imagine the whole US electorate as a kind of “parliament”. You are the democrat party, and you’re worried you won’t have enough votes to win a majority outright over the republicans. Why not build support among smaller electoral groups by making some concessions to them?
In regards to your long copypasta: I do not give a shit who you or anyone else does or doesn’t vote for. That is, as ever, for the individual to decide. Read every comment I’ve ever made, and I promise you won’t find me telling anyone who to vote for or even who not to vote for.
What I cannot stand is when people pretend like there isn’t a choice, telling people how they “have to” vote, telling people that a vote for x is really a vote for y, or pretending that the only people who disagree must be shills/bots/Russians/tankys/etc. I’m just out here trying to explain how some of us genuinely see things.
If you actually read my ‘long copypasta’, you’d actually understand why you shouldn’t vote for x, and why a vote for x is really a vote for y. It’s really clearly laid out and easy to digest, and makes it clear how your withholding your vote because we didn’t give you the concession of running D&D instead of GURPSabandoning Israel to the tender mercies of Iran and HAMAS with Russia waiting in the wings to show how America is anti-Semitic and filled with ‘fascist Leftists’ just ends up getting the CheerleaderRepublican elected and getting D&D night completely cancelledRepublicans into office and Israel given more guns to spark the End Times fight the Christofascists want to see happen.
This shit is important to a whole bunch of us. In particular, I’m worried about it because Christofascists particularly hate my Black Bisexual Goth Pagan wife. That’s why I am calling this nonsense out. Maybe that’ll help get you to see it from our side, now that you explained it from your side?
None of what you are writing is particularly “clearly laid out and easy to digest… etc etc”. Doesn’t mean I don’t understand it, but hey, the author and the audience don’t always agree. For example, we would both likely say similarly about my writing and your reading.
Don’t think I’m not sympathetic to your fears and concerns. I am. I do worry about the future quite a bit. I worry for my own family, friends, community, country, planet… I also have a Palestinian friend. She has lost many friends and relatives to the bombs that we send to Israel. Every day she worries for the ones who yet remain alive. Knowing her, and hearing her stories helps me to empathize with Palestinian suffering, but even if I didn’t know her, I still would.
So yes, I do empathize with you and your fears, but I cannot trade what might happen to your family (or mine) for what is happening right now in Palestine.
So yes, I do empathize with you and your fears, but I cannot trade what might happen to your family (or mine) for what is happening right now in Palestine.
Hey, guess what, you’re not! Nothing here is being traded! Rather, you’re voting for genocide in the US and genocide in Palestine! How brave of you!
Dems: “Wow, we moved drastically to the left and it’s still not enough to satisfy these Very Important Leftists. I guess they’re a lost cause as a voting bloc, considering that we’re already running a platform trying to get the widest possible spread between left and right voters that will only win on a handful of percentage points. Time to see if we can peel off any right-wing voters again.”
I will never be satisfied with our government even if Democrats control the whole thing. But I recognize that there’s nothing I can do to change that because this country is full of people almost entirely unlike me and I should vote for the Democrats because they’re the least worst party that can win.
Pro-fracking, pro having a fascist in their Cabinet, pro-war profiteering even during a genocide, and you call it the most left-leaning ticket in ages? I hate that I have to agree, but I don’t think it’s as strong of a point as you’d like it to be.
If the democrats weren’t insisting on holding water for Israel’s genocide, the green party wouldn’t even be a nuisance to them.
Say whatever you want about how crazy they are, but the one issue the democrats are actually hurting from is their genocide support. If for no other reason than to push the dems to change that policy I think the greens are a huge benefit.
Absolutely right. All the people in my mentions are mad at this fact. I keep trying to tell them that it doesn’t matter what Stein’s whole platform is, as long as she has a saner opinion than the dems on genocide, she will be an alternative for a lot of people. Her voters know she won’t win, but they will not vote in support of a genocide! It’s not “single issue voting”, it’s having a moral baseline.
Edit: This is especially true right now, since there is a huge group of (otherwise dem) voters for whom the genocide is a dealbreaker. See the ‘Undecided’ movement for a clear example.
I know there are plenty of arguments to hit the dems on from the left. However, most of the attacks I’m privy to seem to be more about establishing leftist cred than actually doing something productive, and Jill Stein is one of the best examples of this.
It’s not clear to me what you mean here. Are you saying that AOC is attacking Jill Stein in order to bolster her own “leftist cred”, or that Jill Stein is chasing “leftist cred” by attacking democrats?
If it’s the second one, then I would just refer you back to my previous comment. Any attacks from Jill Stein could be easily defused by adopting a few popular planks. If you actually meant it the first way, then yeah I kind of agree!
Jill Stein attacking others on the left to establish leftist cred, just like so many other leftists we see on the net.
We have so much more in common than we have differences, and we could get a lot done if we were to band together - but instead we do the right’s job for them by dividing ourselves.
I don’t think that’s a very charitable interpretation of what is easily explained by honest political differences. People can and do work together when possible, but there are also issues too important to compromise on.
You’re painting “so many leftists we see on the net” with that same brush though. Is it so hard to believe that there are people genuinely to the left of you politically? What “actions” do you need to see from Jill Stein? She’s been running for office, giving interviews and speeches that platform issues that the dems are weak on. If nothing else she’s forcing democrats like AOC (and you, presumably) to engage with these ideas or risk political consequences. If we didn’t have 3rd party candidates to the left, there would be even less pressure on the dems to adopt leftist policies.
She could start by dropping out of the race, endorsing Kamala, and then putting every dollar she has into organizing for national ranked choice voting so that hopefully once in my life I can vote my conscience at the same time I vote pragmatically.
I sincerely doubt there is much room between where Stein is at on the issues and where AOC is at on the issues - the main difference is that AOC is not running for president and making it easier for despicable people who don’t care about anything to win.
That basic strategy is why you rarely see people shitting on Bernie. He manages to pull the conversation to the left while not fucking everything up by being a spoiler.
Yes, but then being unwilling to take any concession is not. The green party could, for example, pull itself off of ballots in key states or elections when the Democrats agree to their policies.
Running a doomed to fail candidate that only weakens the likelihood of the most left candidates and pulling progressives out of the Democrat party is a bad move.
Say what your will about RFK, he’s getting political power from Trump by dropping (if Trump wins). What will the green party get? Nothing.
Dropping and endorsing after concessions is the real way for a minority party to weld power. Running no matter what is just delusion that works counter to any goal you might have.
I just want you to understand how this sounds when it’s flipped:
Yes, but then being unwilling to take any concession is not. The democrat party could, for example, pull itself off of ballots in key states or elections when the Greens agree to their policies.
It may be easier to identify this way that this is not a reasonable position, no matter which party it is about.
Look, whatever you think of Jill Stein, she can only be a threat to democrats because they are vulnerable to arguments from the left. If you don’t want to be vulnerable from the left, adopt some of their popular ideas. Putin isn’t tricking Americans into being anti genocide, or into wanting universal health care.
Brilliant, thanks for outlining this. So tired of the Russian / Putins Puppet line from idiot Democrats
She isn’t so much making arguments from the left, but arguments from fantasy land. She thinks wifi is bad for kids brains and that we can stop using fossil fuels AND nuclear by 2030. Most of what she says simply had no basis in reality.
Are those the arguments you think that are siphoning off democratic voters?
No, but why would you trust the word of someone who makes those arguments?
If she thinks wifi may cause cancer, that we can totally phase out fossil fuels with no loss in quality of life by 2030, that we should phase out nuclear energy, and that we should entertain vaccine skepticism… Why should I even bother to listen to an anti science quack like her?
I want the genocide to end. I want someone in power who wants it to end and has a plan to make it end. Everything Jill Stein has said suggests to me she has no idea how reality actually works, nor that she has any ideas on how to achieve her stated goals. She’s just virtue signaling.
Now, a good leader can’t do or plan everything. They aren’t going to come up with every solution. That’s what they have advisors and like-minded allies in Congress for. If Stein was elected, she would have no fellow Greens in Congress, and we have no guarantee that she’d actually pick experts as her advisors – I’d actually expect the contrary from someone who thinks Wi-Fi causes cancer. But we don’t really know because the Green Party is utterly ineffectual and just cosplays every 4 years.
You’re missing the point. Nobody has to trust her word. She doesn’t have to be right about everything, she just has to be correct on this particularly important issue. Nobody thinks Jill Stein is going to win. Nobody. So they don’t have to imagine how she would implement her platform. It is irrelevant.
The problem for the democrats is that they are so WRONG on this one thing (genocide), that a certain subset of their potential voters can’t bring themselves to vote dem. Some of those voters may be bluffing and some may not be. Dems will roll the dice and hope for the best, rather than come out against genocide (my prediction).
So how do you know that she’s actually against genocide and not just saying it to get some support? If nobody has to trust her word, then why believe her there?
What has she done? Is she organizing demonstrations to protest against Israel and in favor of a cease fire? Is she using her party apparatus to fundraise and donate 100% of proceeds to Gaza aid? Is she trying to speak with Biden, Blinken, or even Democrat congressional members who agree with her?
Or is she just lazing on Twitter and saying how awful it is while also excusing Russia’s casus belli into Ukraine?
This whole thing is symbolic of her failure, lack of seriousness, and grifting. She isn’t actually doing anything for the causes she claims are super important and her top priority. She’s just being a Twitter activist and saying she’s very concerned. Stein doesn’t do things. She says things. Her actions don’t reflect any convictions.
How many times can I tell you that you’re missing the point. None of what you said matters! When Biden or Harris can barely even pretend to be against genocide, and continue to be responsible (via their current positions of power) for arming the Israelis, that is an acute emergency. The only reason that a potential dem voter is considering voting for Stein instead, is that, #1: she’s on the ballot, and #2: she’s against the genocide.
Any of your attacks or criticisms of her are irrelevant as long as those two things are true, or until Harris makes a drastic change to her policy.
Lots of people live in fantasy lands, not just the diehard Trumpers
Sure. Even plenty of dem voters! But just to be clear, do you think that the WiFi issue or the genocide issue is costing democrats more potential votes?
The genocide that Israel is doing, or China?
Which one are US elected representatives actively supporting with US taxpayer dollars?
The no fossil fuels by 2030 one definitely is. Mostly she is drawing both-siders who think (incorrectly) that both sides are just as bad as each other.
I do think RCV would be a better system than what we have now, but I have very little confidence that it could ever be implemented without some loopholes that would essentially undermine it.
Do you think Australia/Ireland have those loopholes too, or is there something else we need to fix first before it’ll work here?
Look up STAR voting. Similar but better system.
And Schulze is even better than that, but we’re never going to get anything better than FPTP if we can’t coordinate on a first step.
Heck, I feel a little dirty inside calling IRV by “RCV” to appeal to the general public.
I do have that concern but based on how RCV has worked in some real elections my concerns with it a major enough that it might be worth it to advocate for a different system. I don’t want electoral reforms as a whole to go down because of imperfections with RCV.
I mean gotta coalesce around something cause right now debating before the door is even opened is seriously killing momentum.
Edit: Think back to occupy. People defeating each other before the real battle even starts is a guaranteed way to lose.
I’m not familiar with how elections work in those countries, but from what I do hear, Aussie politics is pretty rightwing.
She can only be a threat to democrats in a first past the post voting system.
The Green party doesn’t run on its policies. They’ve opposed nuclear for decades, and we’d be having a very different conversation about global warming if they hadn’t basically won there. They have opposed WiFi and cell phone radiation as “cancer causing”, and have supported homeopathy. If they ran on their policies, they would find a dwindling number of people on the left who actually support them, because they’re vestigial loons concocted in a 1960s hippie lab.
The Green party runs on being the only party on the left that’s bigger than almost nothing. That’s it, that’s all they do.
So she’s only a threat in the system we actually have?
Yes. And also, a loon who does not want to run on the policies her party supports, because she would lose even in a better voting system.
And what do you call a “serious” party that manages to lose to people like Donald Trump?
A party blind to the problems with American society.
Now that we have that out of the way, is the Green Party able to defend their policies on their merits?
I can imagine that they at least attempt to. I don’t really understand what you’re getting at though. Given their place in the American political landscape, they don’t really have to. Democrats on the other hand, given their position, have to be able to defend all of their policies on the merits. That’s what this whole conversation is about-- democrats mad at the left for making them defend the indefensible.
So, this old, tired shit again.
Democrats do not support Genocide, and the war in Gaza is not clear cut. First, who started it? Hamas started it. They and Netanyahu want this war. They want to grind each other down so the loser is dust and the winner is weakened so whoever else is out there (Iran for Israel, the USA for Hamas and their supporters) can come in and mop up and finish the job.
Suppose Harris announces tomorrow that she’s going to leave Israel out to dry. What happens? Russia promptly moves in and offers Israel guns, missiles, bombs, and fuel, and promptly accuses the USA of supporting Genocide. They and their Green Party USA useful idiots (complete with Stein sharing a table with Putin) are already claiming that the USA is supporting Genocide, but they’d just shift it over to the Israelis, which would be a correct statement in that situation. We’d come out looking bad.
And if you think the Green’s ratfucking America is bad, imagine how people of Jewish decent, especially moderates and nationalists, might respond to it. Considering they represent up to 5% of the voting populations, and have lots of friends, leaving Israel to hang out to dry would likely lose far more voters than cowtowing to the anti-“Genocide” faction would gain the Dems.
But calling Democrats mass-murderers is easy to do because people are dumb. All we can do is remind everyone that if you vote Green instead of Blue on Election Day, you’re going to get Red on Inauguration Day, and Project 2025 up the Back Entrance.
Yours is the old, tired shit. I see you trying to shift the rhetorical focus. “Genocide is bad, so now shift to denying the genocide, or at least justifying it.” If Israel is justified, then this issue just evaporates! Right? Except the whole world knows that Israel is unjustified-- not just in this moment of slaughter, but for many years before as well. Peruse the decades of UN votes where only the US defended Israel’s crimes.
Yes, there are many Zionist Jews in the US, and there are also many Jews in the US that are horrified by Israel’s destruction of Gaza. I have marched with some in support of Palestinian lives. Are there more Zionist or non-zionist Jewish votes to be had in the US? I honestly do not know. On the one hand, that is a political consideration, but it is also a cynical one. People should look to their leaders to defend just principles.
Your fantasy of Russia moving to replace the US as Israel’s patron is… wild.
Maybe if you read my comments, you wouldn’t be confused.
I am reading your comments, but I am still missing your point. Nobody that votes for the Greens in the US thinks they are in any danger of winning and outlawing WiFi.
We? Nah man, you’re not part of we.
I don’t even understand what you are trying to say. Is this a subtle insinuation that I’m not a US citizen or something?
Kamala and Walz are more left-leaning than any dem ticket in ages. If the purpose of the Green party is to move the democrats left, then they should drop out to reward them for moving left.
Why would they stop now in that case? “More left-leaning than any dem ticket in ages” is not a very high bar. Shit, it’s so low, you can’t even slip “opposes genocide” under it!
It’s so left leaning, Reagan would vote for lots of it!
I mean I have to agree that it’s disgusting and pathetic that almost every western mainstream political party is complicit and the rest are silent at best.
But, if you can stand me saying it, I think we actually have a chance to change the party. A Dem ticket like this is a once in lifetime event. If they lose I would be surprised if I ever see one this good again in my lifetime. If they get in, and if they get in with a strong majority, I can see it fundamentally changing the party. Every dem who blames the left for losing elections will turn to dust instantaneously ( don’t fact check me on this ).
I don’t really know what effect it’ll have because I’m just some guy. But I think this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I think it could fundamentally change the DNC. It could disempower the right of the party and bring leftist ideas into the political mainstream. It won’t be perfect, but it could be something. It could be huge.
I lost that kind of optimism years ago.
In France, Left-leaning parties got together and decided which ones had the best chance in each ‘district’ of winning, and the other parties would drop out. They did this to ensure that the Le Pen led Fascist party didn’t have a chance of winning. Sure, the aftermath hasn’t been pretty, but no neo-Nazis running the country.
Here in the USA, we should be doing the same thing, except the Green Party isn’t in this to win it. They’re in it to throw bombs. They’re in it to disrupt the ‘evil Democrats’. And they have help. Jill Stein was photographed sitting down with Putin, who really benefits if we’re ruled by Fascist Republicans. Republicans have been caught propping up the campaigns of alternative Leftist parties. And even Netanyahu is hoping Jill Stein pulls enough votes from Kamala Harris so that Donald Trump wins.
As always. This is a School SGA election, we’re the 51 Nerds arguing amongst ourselves, and the 49 Jocks, including the Book Girl who is pretending to be one of us, are watching as we argue our way into handing the SGA to the Jocks, so they can cancel Book Club, Chess Club, D&D Night, and everything else we support, because we’re too busy arguing with each other to realise that the only way we beat them is by delivering at least 49 votes to Nerd Boy on Election Day.
==================== Reposted as this shit keeps being relevant ====================================
This poster would have you believe that your vote cannot result in you getting the worst possible outcome. Allow me to make it clear that yes, you can screw yourself and those you care about if you make the wrong choice on your vote.
Let’s take a class of High School students. The class is pretty evenly divided between Jocks (49) and Nerds (51), and there’s an election for the SGA coming up. Looking at the numbers, it looks like the Nerds have a good chance of winning, by two votes, but let’s say that this isn’t as clear as the numbers show.
The candidates are pretty distasteful for a lot of students at the school. On the Nerds’ side is a geeky boy, with square glasses, buck teeth, and a taste for pocket protectors. This kid is stereotypical Nerd, with the personality to match. He’s vaguely unpalatable, being too much into D&D and video games, but he’s also really damn smart, and his platform are things the Nerds would really like – pushing the school to fund after-school activities like Book Swap, the D&D Club, Debate Team, Chess Club, and so on.
On the Jock’s side is a pretty blonde cheerleader, the Homecoming Queen and heart-throb for many a boy in that school. But she’s a massive jerk, with an entitlement streak a mile wide, known for throwing temper tantrum(p)s when she doesn’t get her way, and a platform that includes taking all the money that would have gone to the nerdy after-school activities and putting it into prom and sports.
Of course, this stereotypical school of the 1980s will use the voting system used by the USA back in the 1980s, the classic voting system of First Past the Post, where all the votes are counted, and at the end, the one with the most votes wins.
In a 49 to 51 election, it’s clear that the Nerds win by a squeaker, but that’s not how elections work in the USA, and Cheerleader has a secret weapon. Most of her friends are of course fellow cheerleaders, dance team members, and athletes. But counted among her number is a bookish girl who is good with her studies, someone that were you to glance at her, you’d assume she’s with the Nerds. But she and Cheerleader have known each other since they were toddlers, and while Bookish Girl is smart, she’s also desperate for attention and acceptance. Bookish Girl is Cheerleader’s key to victory.
Cheerleader and Bookish Girl sit down after school and go over strategy. It’s clear that the numbers don’t support Cheerleader. All 51 Nerds are pretty sweet on that whole “Nerd After School Activities” thing. But they aren’t all as firmly dedicated to voting. For one thing, Nerd Boy is not well liked, with no social skills what-so-ever. He’s the kind of guy that doesn’t get a girl easily, and is awkward around girls and does things that can easily be styled as being demeaning and degrading to girls. Nerds are also notoriously flakey when it comes to making appointments when those appointments collide with what they would rather be doing.
Bookish Girl suggests three strategies to Cheerleader. They are:
Let’s say Election Day, 3 gamers skip out on the vote, one of the feminists stay home on the accusations, and the other, plus two more Nerds, vote for Bookish Girl. The tally of votes comes out to:
Remember what the rules were? The one with the most votes wins. Those 7 kids ended up denying themselves and the 44 other kids the Nerd Boy’s platform. Hopefully they’ll enjoy the prom they’ll be excluded from and the constant bullying and teasing by the Jocks, because there will be no book club to go to, or D&D night to play in, or so on.
Really, all Cheerleader needed was for Bookish Girl to run, with a side dose of that other cheerleader’s accusation (let’s just call her Tara Reade…), and it’s 49 to 48 to 3, which is STILL a win for Team Jock. And that’s how narrow our elections are today.
You may think that Harris is a lockin to win, and you’re convinced by someone like this poster that you can vote third party. The problem is you can’t know how many Jocks and Nerds are in this school. Are there 55 Nerds and only 45 Jocks? Can you vote for the Bookish Girl over the Nerd Boy because Nerd Boy did something you don’t agree with in Junior High, or because he dissed your favourite pop culture icon, or he’s a GURPS player rather than a D&D player, or so on, and Bookish Girl is idealic? How will you feel when you wake up the next morning and come to school and see that Jocks won 45 to 44 to 11, and you and 10 other people are absolute dufuses who let the nerd activities go by the wayside?
And to make this REAL…how will you feel come the next morning if you wake up, see your State went to Trump, and thus gave Trump the 270 EVs he needed to win. Remember, Trump’s Jock-favoured activities can be read about in Project 2025…
In conclusion, you shouldn’t listen to dufuses like this poster. We saw what happened last time we let them poison our minds. Your vote CAN get you the absolute worst outcome, and the only people who want that to happen are accelerationists and Trump Plants. I’ll leave it to you to determine what THIS poster is.
Politics works very differently in France. There, in a multiparty parliamentary system parties often make temporary alliances together in order to form a functioning legislature. This is great for the smaller parties because they get a chance at real political leverage for their constituents. “You want to block the Nazis’ legislative agenda? Fine, but you must agree to stop selling weapons to Israel.”
The closest thing we have to such leverage in the US, is the ‘threat’ of 3rd (or “spoiler” if you prefer) parties. Imagine the whole US electorate as a kind of “parliament”. You are the democrat party, and you’re worried you won’t have enough votes to win a majority outright over the republicans. Why not build support among smaller electoral groups by making some concessions to them?
In regards to your long copypasta: I do not give a shit who you or anyone else does or doesn’t vote for. That is, as ever, for the individual to decide. Read every comment I’ve ever made, and I promise you won’t find me telling anyone who to vote for or even who not to vote for.
What I cannot stand is when people pretend like there isn’t a choice, telling people how they “have to” vote, telling people that a vote for x is really a vote for y, or pretending that the only people who disagree must be shills/bots/Russians/tankys/etc. I’m just out here trying to explain how some of us genuinely see things.
If you actually read my ‘long copypasta’, you’d actually understand why you shouldn’t vote for x, and why a vote for x is really a vote for y. It’s really clearly laid out and easy to digest, and makes it clear how your withholding your vote because we didn’t give you the concession of
running D&D instead of GURPSabandoning Israel to the tender mercies of Iran and HAMAS with Russia waiting in the wings to show how America is anti-Semitic and filled with ‘fascist Leftists’ just ends up getting theCheerleaderRepublican elected and gettingD&D night completely cancelledRepublicans into office and Israel given more guns to spark the End Times fight the Christofascists want to see happen.This shit is important to a whole bunch of us. In particular, I’m worried about it because Christofascists particularly hate my Black Bisexual Goth Pagan wife. That’s why I am calling this nonsense out. Maybe that’ll help get you to see it from our side, now that you explained it from your side?
None of what you are writing is particularly “clearly laid out and easy to digest… etc etc”. Doesn’t mean I don’t understand it, but hey, the author and the audience don’t always agree. For example, we would both likely say similarly about my writing and your reading.
Don’t think I’m not sympathetic to your fears and concerns. I am. I do worry about the future quite a bit. I worry for my own family, friends, community, country, planet… I also have a Palestinian friend. She has lost many friends and relatives to the bombs that we send to Israel. Every day she worries for the ones who yet remain alive. Knowing her, and hearing her stories helps me to empathize with Palestinian suffering, but even if I didn’t know her, I still would.
So yes, I do empathize with you and your fears, but I cannot trade what might happen to your family (or mine) for what is happening right now in Palestine.
Hey, guess what, you’re not! Nothing here is being traded! Rather, you’re voting for genocide in the US and genocide in Palestine! How brave of you!
And Ukraine. Don’t forget Ukraine.
Dems: “Wow, we moved drastically to the left and it’s still not enough to satisfy these Very Important Leftists. I guess they’re a lost cause as a voting bloc, considering that we’re already running a platform trying to get the widest possible spread between left and right voters that will only win on a handful of percentage points. Time to see if we can peel off any right-wing voters again.”
I will never be satisfied with our government even if Democrats control the whole thing. But I recognize that there’s nothing I can do to change that because this country is full of people almost entirely unlike me and I should vote for the Democrats because they’re the least worst party that can win.
Pro-fracking, pro having a fascist in their Cabinet, pro-war profiteering even during a genocide, and you call it the most left-leaning ticket in ages? I hate that I have to agree, but I don’t think it’s as strong of a point as you’d like it to be.
Why not?
If the democrats weren’t insisting on holding water for Israel’s genocide, the green party wouldn’t even be a nuisance to them.
Say whatever you want about how crazy they are, but the one issue the democrats are actually hurting from is their genocide support. If for no other reason than to push the dems to change that policy I think the greens are a huge benefit.
Absolutely right. All the people in my mentions are mad at this fact. I keep trying to tell them that it doesn’t matter what Stein’s whole platform is, as long as she has a saner opinion than the dems on genocide, she will be an alternative for a lot of people. Her voters know she won’t win, but they will not vote in support of a genocide! It’s not “single issue voting”, it’s having a moral baseline.
Sounds like both could be true at the same time.
If someone is going to vote for Stein because of genocide they’re definitely not going to vote for Harris even if Stein wasn’t running.
Some would, some wouldn’t.
Edit: This is especially true right now, since there is a huge group of (otherwise dem) voters for whom the genocide is a dealbreaker. See the ‘Undecided’ movement for a clear example.
Did you know this isn’t .ml?
Hurrdurr
I know there are plenty of arguments to hit the dems on from the left. However, most of the attacks I’m privy to seem to be more about establishing leftist cred than actually doing something productive, and Jill Stein is one of the best examples of this.
It’s not clear to me what you mean here. Are you saying that AOC is attacking Jill Stein in order to bolster her own “leftist cred”, or that Jill Stein is chasing “leftist cred” by attacking democrats?
If it’s the second one, then I would just refer you back to my previous comment. Any attacks from Jill Stein could be easily defused by adopting a few popular planks. If you actually meant it the first way, then yeah I kind of agree!
Jill Stein attacking others on the left to establish leftist cred, just like so many other leftists we see on the net.
We have so much more in common than we have differences, and we could get a lot done if we were to band together - but instead we do the right’s job for them by dividing ourselves.
I don’t think that’s a very charitable interpretation of what is easily explained by honest political differences. People can and do work together when possible, but there are also issues too important to compromise on.
Hah!
She wants to play them off as honest political differences anyway.
When her actions match her supposed intentions then I’d be more willing to give her charity.
You’re painting “so many leftists we see on the net” with that same brush though. Is it so hard to believe that there are people genuinely to the left of you politically? What “actions” do you need to see from Jill Stein? She’s been running for office, giving interviews and speeches that platform issues that the dems are weak on. If nothing else she’s forcing democrats like AOC (and you, presumably) to engage with these ideas or risk political consequences. If we didn’t have 3rd party candidates to the left, there would be even less pressure on the dems to adopt leftist policies.
She could start by dropping out of the race, endorsing Kamala, and then putting every dollar she has into organizing for national ranked choice voting so that hopefully once in my life I can vote my conscience at the same time I vote pragmatically.
I sincerely doubt there is much room between where Stein is at on the issues and where AOC is at on the issues - the main difference is that AOC is not running for president and making it easier for despicable people who don’t care about anything to win.
That basic strategy is why you rarely see people shitting on Bernie. He manages to pull the conversation to the left while not fucking everything up by being a spoiler.
Calling for an arms embargo is productive.
Yes, but then being unwilling to take any concession is not. The green party could, for example, pull itself off of ballots in key states or elections when the Democrats agree to their policies.
Running a doomed to fail candidate that only weakens the likelihood of the most left candidates and pulling progressives out of the Democrat party is a bad move.
Say what your will about RFK, he’s getting political power from Trump by dropping (if Trump wins). What will the green party get? Nothing.
Dropping and endorsing after concessions is the real way for a minority party to weld power. Running no matter what is just delusion that works counter to any goal you might have.
I just want you to understand how this sounds when it’s flipped:
Yes, but then being unwilling to take any concession is not. The democrat party could, for example, pull itself off of ballots in key states or elections when the Greens agree to their policies.
It may be easier to identify this way that this is not a reasonable position, no matter which party it is about.