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Anything that helps legitimize trump (increase overall pop vote numbers, regardless of loss) or props up green party and stein with a stated intention to get trump elected, in fact "helps trump"
Considering a vote for Dr. Jill Stein? I'm open if you have some insight I'm missing, but in my experience the green party has some exciting ideas on the surface, as lip service, but the party doesn't put in meaningful work in interim government outside of a presidential election cycle every 4 years. So it's a meaningless party.
You may think, "I'm in a solid red or blue state where my vote can't influence at the national level", but I find it hard to support Green/Stein in any capacity with how blatantly Stein has, in my opinion, been knowingly running as a spoiler candidate. The Green party has a (now publicly stated) intention to have Harris lose Michigan specifically. Below is clip from a Stein rally in Dearborn, Michigan. A surrogate for Stein is about to introduce her and spells out their intentions very clearly during remarks,
"We are not in a position to win the White House, but we do have a real opportunity to win something historic... we could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan. And the polls show that most likely Harris cannot win the election without Michigan.”
I would ask anyone considering a vote for Stein, in any state, to consider that truth they speak openly - When they are admitting that they can't win, stating a goal to defeat the Harris campaign and acknowledging that Harris likely cannot win the election without Michigan, the undeniable net of that is that they are working to directly secure a second trump presidency, in my opinion.
As I see it, we just cannot have it both ways in a two party system. If the green party was a serious movement working against two party politics (and I would personally embrace and support this) they would become THE platform for ranked choice voting with a green party candidate in every meaningful on/off year election to make that issue ubiquitous with green. They speak endlessly about the flawed two party system (with a clear bias towards shitting in dems), but in the current two party system we actually have, you can't cast a protest vote without actually casting a vote for trump in this election - And that cannot be stated more clearly than this green party spokesperson states it at this event before Stein speaks.
Here is a link to direct feed of that green party rally in Dearborn Michigan if anyone wants to see first hand to consider. It's a longer video, but it starts at the point discussed and surrogate makes the above quoted statement within about the first minute speaking. https://youtu.be/WKSm2FQ8z60?t=5153
And trump acknowledges as much directly mentioning Stein and green party campaign by name recently,
"Cornel West — he’s one of my favorite candidates, Cornel West," Trump said. "And I like — I like her also. Jill Stein. I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100% from [Biden]. [West] takes 100%. Kennedy’s probably 50/50, but he’s a fake.”
https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/trump-speech-jill-stein-cornel-west-rcna158627
I've heard individual positions I like from West, Stein and others in the past, but in my opinion if they aren't fighting to be the bridge to engage the flawed structure of elections in this country as third parties, these are just campaigns driven more by individual candidate ego than a motivation for systemic change.
Those are my thoughts.
I get the logic you put forth. Yet as someone who lives in a more diverse democracy (although it has been getting dangerously more polarized in the recent decades), I'm always baffled by this presumption that a candidate deserves someone's vote by default.
In this case, let's say there aren't any other parties on the ballot other than the Democrats and Republicans. In Michigan specifically you have a voter group, that says that they cannot vote for genocide especially if it is against their own families or people that look like them. And both parties are either promising the continuation thereof or have been engaged in it and have been excluding anything related to addressing it, or people representing that voter group, from their campaign. So the presumption, that if there wasn't a Green Party to vote for that they would be coming out to vote for the Democrats is imho just flawed. They might just as likely stay home.
What I find even more baffling is that this party can't seem to clearly outperform the even more clearly dangerous candidate to democracy. The Arabic or Muslim population in Michigan should not be this decisive for the outcome, if the Democrats were able to actually persuade voters to turn out by delivering an attractive policy plan, thereby earning the votes, instead of just arrogantly thinking, they're entitled to them.
Nobody thinks they are entitled to votes. This is about triage during an emergency.
To make it simple, let's assign a number out of 100 - Likelihood that a second trump presidency enthusiastically and loudly helps Israel escalate and "finish" their genocide in Gaza: 98.9
Likelihood that post inauguration, a Harris presidency does something that doesn't go as far as the above, but still does meaningful damage, just more quietly through diplomacy and weapons shipments: 32
Now it isn't great that the Harris number isn't zero, even negative, but the reasoning for her campaigns current position is likely a combination of election politics plus the vestiges of Biden's outdated and misguided position on blind support for an Israel that's in his mind and not in front of him.
So first up in a triage... You get Harris in because less likelihood for absolute annihilation. I'd then wager a likely softening at worst to full end of support at best once Biden and election are out of the active picture. Most importantly, we eject Harris because a Harris presidency will preserve your right to protest Harris. A second trump presidency likely leads to the end of American democracy and the freedoms Americans take for granted.
After a Harris admin victory she needs to be sworn in the following January, but on day one, I fully support that we FILL the streets across the country, a la Vietnam era protests. We block freeways and interrupt commerce until a Harris administration ends all US support of Israel's genocide. We will have that right and that chance with Harris, you'll get shot in the fucking eye and tackled into an unmarked minivan if you try that in a second trump administration.
Realize the weight of this decision, and listen to Stein's own campaign telling you they are doing to get trump elected. Time to get WIDE awake and ADULT on the reality here.
I'm familiar with First-Past-The-Post voting and the spoiler effect. I'm also familiar with choosing to vote for whom you'd prefer to fight when elected. We are dealing with the crimes of crimes here and I can absolutely understand anyone whose family is affected to not want to take an active role in their killing. Especially since the campaign has not signaled to that voter block, that they are seen or heard. The best example is denying a Palestinian-American a shortened and cleared speech at the DNC. It could have been only a ceremonial thing, less weight than lip-service, but they opted for exclusion instead, i.e. the opposite.
My main point though: How can this party not be clearly ahead of that menace to democracy and its institutions? This one voter block should not be the deciding thing. Overlooking the agency of the Democratic Party in this and putting full blame on the people rubs me very anti-democratic. Implying them to be immature and other forms of voter shaming is not making a good case either.
If you're in a poorly made boat that has a hole in it with two other people...
And you are all actively sinking in that faulty boat, about to die in the middle of the ocean...
And one of the people states they will make more holes so you all drown....
And the other wants to work to keep the boat floating enough to get to shore, but not to your ideal...
Who do you help in that moment, or do you fold your hands and sink on principle? And you understand that sinking is not a neutral, moral victory here, because you've effectively supported the person who wanted to make more holes and sink the boat.
If you don't get to shore, you won't live to attempt to sue that horrible boat company to hold them accountable and keep others from using their faulty boats. And if you don't help the person bailing out water, the person making more holes will kill you all with less effort.
The "people" above are to represent general philosophies of the two "sides" in this discussion, not individual candidates. There is no option to truly stay neutral here, direct action or willful inaction, both have impacts that you are responsible for.
What do you do?
Look, I get what you are saying and even agree to a certain degree. Yet, the premise here is that one of both parties is opposed to genocide, which is false. For the affected voter group, who are getting shamed for making the crime of crimes their litmus test, both people are trying to make more holes albeit of different sizes.
So, what would you do? I would probably throw both of them over board ;)
The boat is already full of holes, so who put them there? Why didn't they spend the last 4 years patching them, why haven't they thrown the other guy off the boat already, and why have they adopted his boat-cutting rhetoric? Why do you have to deny the democrat's agency in this situation in order to make your point? Their platform is not immutable, it can and should change to one that captures more voters, and the fact it hasn't at such a supposedly critical point with such loud opposition should be a clear message to you: either this election isn't as important as they say it is, or they think they can leave us behind and we will vote for them anyways.
This does not bode well for your future protests, which by the way have already been happening on college campuses and have been met with police violence, uncontested smearing in the media, and not even the barest minimum of defense or policy change from your candidate and current vice president.
You can sit here and try to convince me and the other guy all you want but ultimately we snd the rest of lemmy are a drop in an ocean. Nothing will change unless there's a change in strategy at the top. Their strategy is actively working against your efforts to convince us and yet they urge you to believe that Trump is the most dangerous man on the planet and that they fear for the country if he wins.
If this is true, then why aren't they running a more dynamic and broad-reaching campaign and making real compromises with voters that would split their vote if they broke away? Do you not see the glaring contradiction in their actions vs their words? Is that really a strategy you want to endorse? To promote fear instead of democracy?
Do you not see the value in demonstrating that their losing strategy is, in fact, a losing strategy? How it does you a disservice to cave so easily - to genocide, I might add - without first making demands? What should motivate them to meet your demands if you're just going to vote for them anyways and you never exercise any of your bargaining power to make them sweat?
You're argument hinges on a "both sides are the same" false premise. It's just not true. January 6th was unprecedented in the 250 years of this country. Things are different, this is not the time historically for political posturing. This isn't a Romney versus Obama election. Shit is fundamentally different and you're likely operating from the muscle memory of a time when it was a more of a "polite disagreement". This is the "grandpa sitting with an assault rifle at the polling place" timeline. Wake up.