I wonder if elections everywhere around the world always feel like Groundhog Day, or if that’s just a special American thing. If you thought 2024 would be a rehashing of 2020, now that it’s Trump vs. Harris and not Trump vs. Biden, we’ve been dragged back to the horrors of 2016. Part of that re-run effect is the Green Party campaign of Jill Stein.
When Hillary Clinton lost, liberal politicians and commentators made that loss about everything but the candidate they chose and the platform they ran on. They blamed the voters who wanted Bernie Sanders, a candidate and campaign that arguably changed the litmus for what progressive policies were able to be incorporated into a presidential election. Even more vitriol was saved for those who voted for Stein as a protest vote after Sanders conceded to Clinton; Clinton actually called out Stein in her 2017 memoir.
This time around, there are already several pieces floating around the internet preemptively blaming third party candidates and the voters interested in them for the Democrats’ potential loss, calling them a de facto vote for Trump. The Democrats, who have previously mostly ignored Stein, have come out swinging, running ads calling her a “spoiler,” showing they’re threatened by the possible margins they fear she could tip in swing states. The Washington Post reported last week that Stein’s campaign is receiving funding from a GOP-linked PAC, suggesting they think it might work to their favor, too. (I’ll note here that WaPo owner and Amazon overlord Jeff Bezos decided the publication would not make an endorsement in the election, leading to rightful concern that Bezos is attempting to pave the way for a more corporate interest-friendly admin with Trump, which he denies.)
These screeds on Stein don’t really dig into her politics at all; fair enough, given that she doesn’t stand a chance in hell at the presidency. She’s never held office, beyond a local position in Massachusetts over a decade ago, and her track record is one of consistently losing elections and then doing little besides preparing to run again. (Stein took a break from being the Green Party candidate in the 2020 election, which as you may recall had a 20-person Democratic primary.) Slate’s David Faris argues, “The Green Party is not a particularly serious political operation. Its candidates have never won a federal election, and its vanishingly small number of successful candidates have been mostly at the municipal or state legislative level.”
There are also valid strikes against her, like that she was endorsed by white supremacist David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader. That’s really bad! (Stein, for her part, condemned Duke and rejected the endorsement. It’s also worth noting that Duke is antisemitic and Stein is Jewish.) She inveighs against corporate money having too much power, but has maintained significant investments in funds which buy into some of the largest and most influential corporations in the country.
Slate’s Faris accuses Stein of serving as a tool for Republicans to “rat-f*ck” the Democrats' chances in swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and especially Michigan, where the Arab population, disproportionately impacted by the war on Gaza, is twice as large as the margin by which Joe Biden won the state in 2020; and of benefitting from Russian disinformation activists. (Again: 2016… ugh.)
A major reason people are looking to Stein is her choice to actively court the Arab and Muslim voters the Harris campaign has largely blown off, proudly running against the war on Gaza, which neither major party has attempted. Indeed, many potential Stein voters are openly admitting they want their vote to send a message to the Democrats about the war. Over half a million people voted “uncommitted,” or some similar option, this year to rebuke Biden on Gaza; many members of those campaigns then pivoted to rebuking Harris once she established she wouldn’t break with the admin’s policy.
Michigan’s Muslim American-led “Abandon Harris” campaign has endorsed Stein. Meanwhile, surrogate Bill Clinton – also accused of sexual harassment – offended Michigan Arab and Muslim voters yet again just days shy of the election, leading liberal commentator Mehdi Hasan to opine, “At this point the Dems *deserve* to lose Michigan. Sheesh.”
So yes, Jill Stein is a deeply problematic candidate. But what exactly is shaming disappointed voters accomplishing? What is the alternative vision for the future that Democrats are pitching? What is their plan to turn out the vote from people who aren’t hypothetical waffling Republicans? And why are they courting the center and ignoring the policy demands of the youth vote, while worrying about third-party votes, which maxed out at 5% of the overall electorate in 2016 and down to 2% in 2020?
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In 2022, youth voters made the midterms what they were for Democrats, and it was clear that what brought them out was the concept of more progressive policy. But that move wasn’t a static one: It was even at the time one of skepticism that the commitments being made would be followed through on. Now, young people are choosing between a vote for Harris and not voting at all, disgusted to choose between another four years of Trump and a Harris admin that’s disappointing them on climate, immigration, and trans rights.
Here’s the sum-up of the Democrats’ – and the Harris campaign, specifically – rightward shift, from Semafor (which is no lefty rag):
That phrasing blames the shift on the electorate, but what about the people Democrats often talk about as their “base”? Voters are told that the Democrats are in an impossible bind, up against the bipartisan nature of our political system; that this will have to be a vote between the “lesser of two evils,” to hold your nose and suck it up or risk your own death.
For starters, young people are beyond sick of hearing this, of the presumption that they should just put up or shut up, when they know that things are only impossible until they aren’t — just remember what they were told about the chances of Joe Biden dropping out despite their opposition to his candidacy. Some of those young voters are among the thousands that were arrested on college campuses this year for protesting the war, where their attempts to engage in the political process were brutally crushed, likely contributing to the disillusionment that may impact their votes.
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And you really can’t blame young people for wanting other options. If you’ve been paying any attention at all to politics over the last few years, then it should be no surprise that the presidential election is again neck-and-neck, likely to go down to the wire.
I shouldn’t even have to say this: Donald Trump is a fascist, a racist, a sexual abuser, and a bigot. This is all public information that I really do not think will change the minds of his supporters; in fact, a lot of them want to vote for him for these express reasons. Some of those pieces against third party candidates make good points about the risks of Trump’s foreign policy, which I think should be pretty obvious to everyone, like his support for seemingly everything Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to do. Trump will undoubtedly cause more suffering in the Middle East.
Vice President Kamala Harris is promising to uphold repro rights and build a "care economy" and generally govern like a serious person. But she's also a former prosecutor who is second in command in an administration funding what the medical journal the Lancet estimates as the deaths of some 186,000 Palestinians, whose campaign is seemingly in a race to out-Republican the Republicans, who can’t even muster the bravery to invite a trans person or a Palestinian to the main stage of the DNC. Even that is a pretty paltry ask, considering that I know multiple people who have lost 50, 60, even 90 members of their families through the U.S.-backed Israeli bombing of Palestine and now Lebanon.
Listen to what young people actually have to say about this stuff. They are desperate for a candidate that takes the issues as seriously as they do, more seriously than electoral polling, more seriously than silly corporate consultants or memes. Here are concerns from two trans youth who recognize that under a Trump administration, access to gender affirming care is under extreme risk:
- I used to think that we needed to vote for these Democrats because the threat of Trump was too high, and I needed to vote for the “lesser evil”. Then in 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned. I spent all of my energy organizing and speaking at protests while I watched Democrats turn a potential movement into a get-out-the-vote campaign, just like they did with BLM… It’s insulting to have my rights be used as fodder for elections. Democrats guilt trip working people into voting for them every 4 years and I’m simply tired of it.
- The Democrats’ timidity to engage in these issues feels hopeless and confusing. When I listen to Republican legislators brag about enshrining transphobia into law, I’m nothing short of terrified. And when no one is there to defend me? That’s just frustrating…
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Or what a young voter told me at the protests outside the Presidential debate in September:
- I think the fact that we haven't really had a say in who represents us is sh*tty. …I still believe that voting is important, I'm still gonna exercise my right, but this is my second presidential election, and both times, I've just felt really disheartened, and I am tired of it.
It is without a doubt that there will be Democrats who will blame a Harris-Walz loss on third party voters. But it’s worth asking what margins could have been made up by actually speaking to the half a million uncommitted voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and beyond, by mobilizing young climate organizers fighting for a livable planet, by boldly supporting and protecting trans healthcare in an election where many are considering leaving the country if Trump wins.
The most recent New York Times-Siena College poll shows Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump polling in a dead heat at 48% each, with Jill Stein polling at 2%. Tens of thousands of people might’ve gone to Harris if she’d committed to a policy shift on Gaza. Days away from Election Day, we’ll see where this got her. One thing we know for sure: Jill Stein won’t be winning.
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