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.
Register to vote: https://vote.gov/
Normally I’d agree with you. But the Green party is rather transparently not actually trying to get elected. They have the same level of seriousness as RFK who publicly stated he’ll only keep his name on the ballot in states where it helps Trump.
If a third party did the leg work, spent a decade getting people elected to congress in every state, and then showed up in the presidential elections I’d be all for it. and before you whine about convenience, I’ve been saying the same thing to Libertarians and Greens for 2 decades now. They either aren’t serious, or they’re incompetent.
Being incompetent is still better than being evil
Is that what it is though? Is there evidence that it’s incompetence and not enemy action? Because getting paid by the Russians and being at dinner with Michael Flynn and Putin is a pretty big leap in the direction of enemy action.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Israel_in_the_Israel–Hamas_war
So you have nothing more than whataboutism. Can you stick to the topic at hand or are we going to discuss the effect of slavery next?
My shoe lace broke the other day and it’s been a real pain to tie them up since. I was thinking about going to the store today but I have so many other errands to do.