Why (or why not) to vote for Jill Stein

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Trump isn’t an isolationist, though. He suggested repeatedly that we have and can use nuclear weapons to “solve” problems.

“MATTHEWS: OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.
TRUMP: Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?”

Do you believe pretending he hasn’t made warmongery statements improves your position to anyone who pays attention? Have you not heard them?

Or do you hope that other people only listen to when he speaks out of one side of the mouth?

Anyone thinks they’re getting an isolationist out of Trump versus the status quo is gullible beyond imagination.

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Not only that but he’s crowed about how he has secret military plans to ramp up attacks in Iraq/Syria/elsewhere to take out ISIS, bragged about how he’d start a war with Iran if Iranians looked at the US wrong, has promoted ending the non-proliferation agreement, etc. He speaks out of both sides of his mouth, promising isolationism to those who want to hear it, while being a chest-beating war hawk whose plans are far more aggressive than Clinton to those who want to hear it. Also, his “isolationism” is mostly a pro-Russian “isolationism” that wants out of NATO, wants to forget about/excuse the invasion of Ukraine, and which would do nothing in response to an invasion of Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania.

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I’m sure he also spouts the usual Libertarian/GOP line about exiting the UN. “isolationism” definitely is used weaselly to suggest peacenik when it is intended to avoid international collaboration, responsibilities, treaties, etc.

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I have to agree. Trump’s been such a moron claiming engagements with every single country but Russia and that he will use nukes as a threat against other countries that the alt-right has been pushing “Clinton will start war with Russia” memes, articles, polls, etc.

I’m sure I can look up the Center for Security Policy that Trump loves to quote and find those stories about Clinton and Russia referenced through a lot of media filtered by blogs and then popular blogs and breitbart and then major media.

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They might have had it not been for Nader. You can’t grow a party’s power in a democracy and also have it be so much a cult of personality, especially if the person involved is also a jackass. Stein just perpetuated the cult, albeit with a weaker personality (and she’s not a jackass).

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I am so glad we are going to have World War III over the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and the other one.

Totally worth it.

Our leaders really have their priorities straight.

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Even without Nader they faced permanent irrelevance by virtue of courting ~5% of the populace to the exclusion of everyone else. That’s a strategy designed to lose elections. I really do think they want to enjoy the benefits of running while ensuring they can’t possibly win, since they have to know that if they were to somehow accidentally win the Green candidate would fare even worse in office than their string of humiliating electoral defeats.

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See also the Liberal Democrats in coalition in the UK.

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Moreover, they court the very people who should be fighting from within the Democratic Party, which leaves the conservative wing with no counterbalance and leads to a situation where Stein spends far more time going after Clinton voters than going after Trump voters or even undecideds. While I’m not crazy about Jeremy Corbyn, the progressive recapture of the Labour Party in the UK is the textbook example of how to work within the system to get your ideas into the forefront of a party that might actually win.

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yeah, who cares about Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians. fuck those guys, right?

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I don’t agree, and it doesn’t sound like you are open to debate, but I have to say this totally fits the thread topic. Well written, well done!

His history to date - not his words - suggests that he will be far less interventionist than Clinton. He’s a businessman; either a successful and very crooked one, or an unsuccessful one with good PR. He doesn’t do direct conflict, he weasels and dodges. Clinton’s a warrior by contrast. But note how I worded it:

We’re essentially disagreeing on something that is purely opinion, since we have no facts on what a GOP win would do, only opinions.   Drumpf’s campaign rhetoric is massively internally self contradictory, and I believe it’s intentionally so.

We all need to be careful not to believe the many utterly inconsistent and contradictory things he says when they support our arguments, and disbelieve them when they don’t. He is a wild card, and he gets a lot of votes from being one.

Good thing that’s not actually the strategy, no matter how many times you claim it is.

You guys make guys like me super unwelcome; I go to Democratic events and I can count on being lectured on how irrelevant my issues are, how wrong my ideas are, and how much better everything would be if I just shut up and voted the way you tell me to. A massive, soulless political machine does not benefit from putting on a snide and supercilious face; the Greens, for all their faults, are far more accepting and open to outside ideas.

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So what would you say their strategy has been, exactly? How have they crafted a message that effectively reaches out to a base other than the handful of far-left sorts? It feels like you were basically agreeing with me about this earlier:

You’re obviously welcome to discuss these matters, and I’m wrong often enough that I am pleased when people disagree since it gives me the chance to question my beliefs and correct false assumptions. Personally, I always find it interesting to hear the justifications and arguments from thoughtful people like you in favor of positions I don’t hold. At the same time you’re not addressing the claim that the Greens function in a way that pushes the Dems further right by courting the left and alienating them from the Dems, but instead talking about how other people aren’t taking your ideas seriously in a different and unrelated context. I don’t find that a compelling explanation of how the Greens drawing a left wing constituency away from the Dems. wouldn’t push the Democratic Party further to the right.

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I thought you were a registered Republican?

I don’t know what you mean by “Democratic events”, but in all of the 8 states where I’ve lived it has been pretty easy to join the Party, come to regular meetings, and have a voice. In Minnesota my Nation-reading lefty wife became a convention delegate on her 2nd meeting, as part of the Rainbow coalition. Here in Hawaii the Sanders faction got one of our own elected to party chair.

I will grant that it wasn’t always that way; for example, the Democratic Party in Illinois was a pretty closed shop when I was growing up in the 60s. However, that all changed after '68. Had it not, the goddamn DLC would never have been able to take advantage of the bitter fight between the moderate wing (Carter) and the progressive wing (Kennedy) and take over in the 80s.

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Are you sure about this one? I don’t know, but everything they speak about in their platform and on Twitter (I follow the Greens & Stein there) all come off as the ideas of purist ideologues with a very narrow interest band of far-left topics and no willingness to compromise. The Greens seem like much less of a Big Tent than the Dems. who are very openly pluralist in accepting members and candidates who are conservatives, liberals, leftist, centrists, etc., though maybe I’m missing something. It honesty seems like the Green Party candidates’ biggest grudge against the Dems is that they’re a Big Tent party and not ideologically pure enough.

Perhaps they’re friendly at events, but as a party they give no appearance of being accepting of anything other than a very predictable left wing orthodoxy.

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As I understand it, the strategy is to get as many Greens into office as necessary to defeat pollution. I’m not a party strategist, but that’s certainly what gets discussed at local Green Party meetings, and that’s why they need to bring in more voters. Ballot access requirements are byzantine and circular in many states - so achieving 2%, 3% and 5% in a Presidential election each represents a significant step towards increasing party representation and membership at every level. The preceding sentence is grammatically suspect but hopefully understandable.

I’m not sure they ever did, or will need to. Every vote being cast in this election is being justified by the horror the voter feels for the alternatives! :slight_smile:

But seriously, am I far-left? I believe that every public school system in America should teach use and care of firearms, and that the right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms should not be infringed. I go to church, and do sexton work there (including digging the occasional grave). I believe that abortion is killing an unborn child (and I support a woman’s right to choose to do so). I think the prescription system is an immoral racket and believe that the FDA is thoroughly corrupt. I believe in well regulated free and fair markets. I could go on… I think I support more right-wing positions than left-wing, although the label is not a big deal to me either way.

I hope the Green party is orthogonal to the right/left axis that the two corporate parties inhabit, and I suspect a great deal of the citizenry is, too.

I’m with you on that! And I still am on the fence about whether the Greens should be more conventional, or should continue to humor the original hippy base. Sorry if that results in conflicting signals; I am conflicted. :frowning:

Sure am! Manned a voting booth for the party in 2008, wrote about it here. I have Reasons.

And yet I was an active campaigner for Obama, including going to Democratic phone-bank calling parties (with my sister at one point, who is actually British). Sure, I got lectured and told I was wrong if I voiced opinions, but they didn’t turn away anyone willing to make phone calls or drive other volunteers back and forth. I have a good friend who is working his way up through the Dem machine, too - he’s young enough for it to be worthwhile, and is already doing county-level strategy work after only 12 years of dedicated party service.

But when Obama reneged on his promise that “telco immunity is off the table” I withdrew my support. That was too dishonorable of a betrayal for me to stomach, and I did not vote for him.

I have to admit that I was referring to the local events, which are often held at bars. And there’s usually a fair sampling of nuttiness present, which is even more true of Republican events…

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For sure this year’s VP candidate is way off the deep end, especially when you compare him to Stein’s 2012 running mate.

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Yes, Baraka’s a real piece of work. The cognitive dissonance in this one is just mind-boggling:

Though I guess it’s probably good that he’s honest about being pro-Trump:

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From Wiki:

Honkala plans a novel political protest called a “fart-in” to be staged at the 2016 DNC “to greet the rhetorical flatulence of Hillary Clinton with the real thing”. Just prior to the protest, Honkala will host a “massive bean supper” for Sanders supporters in her home

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Honkala is kind of a Stein-with-some-political-accomplishments. Her choice was not surprising. I don’t know what Stein was thinking when she chose Baraka, but it doesn’t speak to the soundness of her judgment.

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I suspect Libertarians are majority in some communities here or there, and they have very wealthy backers, so they can provide sinecura even to failed candidates. Are the Greens majority anywhere? Do they have billionaire donors?