cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14778555
@MaxBlumenthal
“Democracy is on the ballot”
@DrJillStein
BREAKING: Jill Stein and her Campaign Manager and Deputy Campaign Manager, Jason Call and Kelly Merrill-Cayer, have been arrested at Washington University in St. Louis while supporting a protest against WashU’s ties to the war on Gaza. Video from @KallieECox
Direct video link: https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1784410882627227648/pu/vid/avc1/1280x720/0RbEXrPU8hvKoqwU.mp4
Source: https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1784440127734812900
While running for president in 2016, Jill Stein attended a gala in Moscow to promote RT “News”, the Russian propaganda machine that is banned in several countries.
There’s, she was photographed seated at a table with Putin and his entourage, as well as Michael Flynn.
I voted Jill Stein in 2016. My vote didn’t matter as I’m in Washington state and we went for Clinton anyway. I was a low information voter at the time and have since resolved to pay way more attention to things like this.
Sorry, but I gotta ask what happened with your typing in that last sentence. “There’s, she was —”
I think you tried to say “There she was —” But you somehow added three unnecessary characters.
I’m in no way going against what you wrote, just can’t understand what happened.
She was there on her own dime, attempting a diplomatic effort to get Russia to curb its violent tactics. Contrary to mainstream belief in America, this has greater potential to bring about actual peace than funding proxy wars in Ukraine and Yemen. The fact she actually managed to be seated with Putin long enough for this picture to be taken is a testament to her legitimacy as a leader, and as a diplomat.
Quite funny to use Jill Stein for this considering she’s done her bit selling us out.
ootl, what bit?
Third party candidates have delivered elections to Republicans in the past that may be why Steve Bannon recruited JFK jr
RFK Jr. I’d be surprised if JFK Jr, a corpse, ran for president.
You can not convince me otherwise that an example of this very typo is responsible for Qanon’s belief that he did, in fact, rise from the dead to run for president or whatever they were smoking.
3rd party candidates can’t get to 270. Voting for them technically helps trump.
Vote blue for one day, organize for 364.
How’s that working out for us? How do you see it actually working for us?
Even before Trump, no one could break through the stranglehold the two party system has. There’s an entire segment of people who are neither centrist nor conservative who have been and will continue to be without a voice. Those people will continue to vote blue/centrist because it’s better than the alternative. Or they will continue to vote red/conservative because there’s no alternative.
The closest we’ve seen to a viable third party candidate was Perot over 30 years ago with 19% of the vote. And you could argue he got by on his “outsider” charm much like trump, rather than any decent ideology.
Keep money and PACs and lobbying in the mix and there will be no change. Keep voting in blue/red and we keep the money flowing… but there’s no conceivable way to vote them out.
I get that in this moment in time it feels like life or death for democracy and it’s anybody but Trump, but let’s imagine that’s all behind us and the threat of Trump is gone. What now? How do we actually get representation instead of two parties run by and for corporations? Because nothing anyone has done in my lifetime so far has made a dent.
You can give up if you’d rather. Or you can look at what America in particular and the world in general used to be and take the wins the left has won and build off them, while learning from the losses.
Unfortunately, one of those lessons is never actually trust liberals, but that’s what the organizing is for.
And if our efforts can’t halt the oh so obvious disaster… Well, revolutions don’t happen when people are happy.
I do feel like giving up. But my question remains, what is the path forward? Let’s say I help “organize”, what does that look like? Protesting in streets doesn’t work in America, speaking with your money does… but I don’t have the money to compete with corporations and collectively we don’t, either.
sidebar: I’m currently at 0 internet points for my comment. Not saying it was you, it probably wasn’t, but my comment was genuine and not some shitpost or edgy hot take. I thought the reason we’re here and not reddit is (among many other things) because voting is used to highlight good conversations that we need to have (and to bury the bullshit), it’s not a hivemind agree/disagree button.
You get to choose between getting punched in the arm, or getting kicked in the face. If you don’t choose, the latter is more likely.
I downvoted both comments, because they’re both talking point by the “everyone gets kicked in the face” party. I also don’t really see “but how do we fix the world?” as a requirement to vote against getting kicked in the face.
Na
They could if people like you didn’t exist
Bruh she’s not even the green candidate this year, literally her only political relevance is bougie white leftists bending over backwards to the point of folding at the belly button to be defensive knobs about having voted for her in 2016 because “don’t vote shame me with alarmism, they wouldn’t ever take away abortion rights you DNC shill!”
I’ll never stop associating her with the scummiest of scum after she sat round-table with Putin (evil fuck), Putin’s henchmen, and Michael Flynn (traitorous christian nationalist fuck). https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/guess-who-came-dinner-flynn-putin-n742696
… The event? A 10-year celebration of Kremlin’s RT propaganda network.
Jill Stein is what Jill Stein has always been — a wedge-driving pawn to Putin no different than Tulsi Gabbard or Glenn Greenwald post-Kompromat.
Shameless
Not her first rodeo either:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/09/dakota-access-pipeline-jill-stein-arrest-green-party
When your #1 strategy to garner attention in an election is “get arrested”, maybe it’s time to re-think your candidacy.
You do know that Jill Stein was an activist, which they tend to get arrested, before she ran for any politicial office position…
Wiki source for basic information:
Stein was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Gladys (née Wool) and Joseph Stein. She was raised in Highland Park, Illinois. Her parents were descended from Russian Jews, and Stein was raised in a Reform Jewish household, attending Chicago’s North Shore Congregation Israel.[6]
In 1973, Stein graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, where she studied psychology, sociology, and anthropology.[7] She then attended Harvard Medical School and graduated in 1979.[7] Stein practiced internal medicine for 25 years[8] at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Simmons College Health Center, and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, which are all located in the Boston area. She also served as an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.[9] Early activism and political career
As a physician, Stein became increasingly concerned about the connection between people’s health and the quality of their local environment. She subsequently turned to activism. In 1998, she began protesting the “Filthy Five” coal plants in Massachusetts.[10][11] Since 1998, she has served on the board of the Greater Boston chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility.[8] She received Clean Water Action’s “Not in Anyone’s Backyard Award” in 1998 and its “Children’s Health Hero Award” in 2000, Toxic Action Center’s “Citizen Award” in 1999, and Salem State College’s “Friend of the Earth Award” in 2004.[12][13][14]
Stein coauthored two reports by the Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development (2000), and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging (2009).[15][16] In Harm’s Way report republished in the peer-reviewed Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics in 2002.[17]
Stein has said that she left the Democratic Party and joined the Green Party when “the Democratic Party killed campaign finance reform in my state”.[10]
Yes, and doing it in 2016 when running for office is a “pay attention to meeeeee!” move. Repeating it here.
Excuse me, OP. Please provide a presidential voting strategy that you would like me to employ with the goal of maximizing positive impact. That’s generally my goal. I try to things that will have a positive impact on society. Please note that ineffective actions don’t have any impact, by definition.
I ask for a voting strategy because you seem to be drawing a line connecting a phrase used to argue in favor of voting for Joe Biden for president (over Trump) with an incident that has recently happened in St. Louis. Presumably you think this incident is bad (on the surface I think it is, too) and would like for things to improve. Presumably you also think Biden is in favor of the outcome with this incident. Do you think Trump would be against this outcome?
There are, of course, other ways to deal with the negative incident that don’t center around your individual vote for president, but you seem to be suggesting that the two are directly connected, which is why I asked my question.
Goal of maximizing positive impact?
Vote Biden.
There are two viable candidates, Biden and Trump. Taking votes away from Biden only helps Trump. So not voting, voting Stein, Kennedy, West, all of that only helps Trump.
Helping Trump is supporting:
- A wanna be dictator:
- Project 2025:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
- War with Mexico:
- Soviet style imprisoning of political enemies:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/30/trump-interview-jail-political-opponents-glenn-beck
- Wiping out Gaza “fast”:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-biden-israel-pr-hugh-hewitt-21faee332d95fec99652c112fbdcd35d
- Surrendering Ukraine to Russia:
- Abandoning allies in Europe:
So, yeah, when the alternative is maximizing negative impact, the only voting solution is to vote for the one person who can defeat that agenda… and that’s Biden.
Why do you claim that is unidirectional? Why not:
“There are two viable candidates, Biden and Trump. Taking votes away from Trump only helps Biden. So not voting, voting Stein, Kennedy, West, all of that only helps Biden.”
E: I only inversed this claim to highlight how ridiculous it sounds. I don’t believe either statement is true. Do you truely not believe that someone would be deciding between Trump and Kennedy, without any consideration for Biden?
Because people who vote Stein at least in theory should be ideologically-aligned with Democrats than Republicans. If you’re voting Stein because you are on the left side of the spectrum, then you need to educate yourself that this is a wasted spoil vote that only enables the Republican party candidate who is further from your goals to get in power. Green party candidates are often bankrolled by Republicans. Guess why.
Ideally, we’d want life-long Republicans to not vote or vote Kennedy or West while we want Stein voters to vote Biden.
Moreover within this community that is predominantly left-leaning, the message is: not-voting or voting third-party helps Trump. If I was in a conservative community, sure I’d be pushing for apathy and voting third party.
Now you know what right-wing operatives and online troll farms do.
Sure… the difference is the Trump block is monolithic. Nothing is going to convince a Trump voter to switch their support, or stay home.
The Democratic side has always been subject to fragmentation in a way that the Republican side has not.
So the risk is peeling off Biden voters for Kennedy, Stein, or West, or simply saying “I’m not voting.”
If your intent is to maximize the most beneficial outcome, vote Biden.
If you want to change how elections work, get your state to go 100% vote by mail to increase turn out, and ranked choice balloting to kill first past the post elections.
Voting for a 3rd party or Independent only splits the vote and guarantees a Trump win.
Great point by reversing it!
Thanks for sharing!
You too bud. 😘
