this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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Can someone give me an overview on the Jill Stein situation? (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 hours ago by Emerald@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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I have never heard of Jill Stein until just a few months ago when I saw some article about her on the Lemmy homepage. Then I saw more and more articles about her. However, I don't really know why the media is paying so much attention to her. She is just a third party candidate, right? There are other third party candidates that aren't constantly popping up in the news. So why Jill Stein? I hear its something to do with Russia and a general sense of her goal being to take votes away from Kamala.

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[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 10 points 1 hour ago

Jill Stein is a Green candidate which means she's going to pull left leaning support away from Kamala Harris.

If she pulls away enough people in a handful of states, she could throw the election to Donald Trump.

2016 is a primary example:

Pennsylvania:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Pennsylvania

Trump - 2,970,733
Clinton - 2,926,441
Difference: 44,292
Stein? - 49,941

Michigan:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Michigan

Trump - 2,279,543
Clinton - 2,268,839
Difference: 10,704
Stein? - 51,463

Wisconsin:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Wisconsin

Trump - 1,405,284
Clinton - 1,382,536
Difference: 22,748
Stein? - 31,072

If Clinton had won those three states, Trump would not have been President.

Stein is not the only factor, Clinton had other issues. She badmouthed coal miners which guaranteed a loss in PA and utterly failed to campaign in MI and WI which was not helpful.

But the Clinton fans who can't accept how deeply, deeply flawed Clinton was as a candidate want to blame Stein...

And Putin. There are issues with Stein getting support from both Republicans and Russia, anything to hurt Democratic candidates.

[–] jeffw@lemmy.world 64 points 4 hours ago

The Russia thing goes beyond the dinner. She had attempted to (maybe actually has?) meet with him privately. She’s has also vacillated on Ukraine.

She’s had weird stances on vaccines, food, and even energy. It’s my understanding she’s privately invested in fossil fuels.

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 53 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I voted for Jill Stein in 2016.

In my defense, I didn't think Trump had a chance, and I definitely didn't expect him to be as terrible as he eventually proved. I was feeling salty about the DNC not giving Bernie a fair chance in the primaries (how and why, I don't remember) and Hilary just felt like she was constantly condescending and not even trying to earn the presidency. It felt like someone decided it was her turn and they'd just slide her into her rightful throne.

My vote for the green party was official record that they hadn't earned my vote, even though I would never vote for Trump.

I'm sure my one single vote wouldn't have changed anything, but I bet there are plenty of others that felt the and did the same, and still regret it.

[–] Benjaben@lemmy.world 1 points 15 minutes ago* (last edited 15 minutes ago)

I did similar, I'm ashamed to admit, except slightly worse - I actually just didn't vote at all, thinking I was really making my dissatisfaction clear that way. What a dumbass I was, and for the same reasons you described. And while a lot of that was undeniably true and a problem, I also now feel fairly sure the "don't vote / vote 3rd party" push was an op, and I fell for it like a dope.

I've voted in every election I've been eligible for before and since 2016, and I will never allow myself to drop the ball like that again. Fuck the DNC but we gotta fight like hell to keep things from getting even worse and they're all we've fuckin got at the moment.

[–] AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.world 27 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

I'm still salty about Bernie being sandbagged. Not a big fan of how Kamala was shoved in either, but she's impressing me more than I expected, I just hope it's enough.

[–] Benjaben@lemmy.world 1 points 2 minutes ago

Yeah that was really some trash and made me furious. The one guy just directly stating all the ways we need to help the working class and also saying basically fuck the rich, with the career-long credentials to back it up, and instead we got force-fed Hillary. She was so unlikeable and entitled, it set the Dems (and shit, maybe even women in leadership as a whole) back by like 10 years. Cuz she acted like a shitty stereotype about women that fed right into the misogynists. Such a colossal fuck up, and that really is putting it mildly. I deleted a whole screed of even more forceful complaining, lol.

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 29 points 3 hours ago

Since she's the VP, it doesn't feel dirty. Joe stepped down, she steps up, that's what we hired her to do.

I just hope it's enough.

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 12 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I'm sure my one single vote wouldn't have changed anything, but I bet there are plenty of others that felt the and did the same, and still regret it.

Depends on what state you were in for that election, and how many other people voted for Stein alongside you.

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 19 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Oh fuck.

Trump won PA by half a percent.

Stein got .8% of the votes.

Stein, the DNC, and 50 thousand people just like me, literally handed him the presidency.

I'm SO sorry, everybody.

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 10 points 2 hours ago

Unfortunately, with FPTP and the electoral college, voting for a third party candidate for president is voting in favor of the major party candidate who you like the least.

This isn’t fair, it’s fact. It should be different, but it isn’t. NPVIC and/or RCV are the way out, and voting third party in this election makes those farther away, or wholly unreachable.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 10 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

You didn’t hand Trump the presidency. The Dems did by not trying to gain your vote.

Never blame yourself for the flaws of representative “democracy”.

[–] AtHeartEngineer@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

Yep, I wish more people would get this.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 0 points 2 hours ago

If "ð other choice is fascism" isn't enough, ðen you're eiðer a fascist yourself, or damn close enough for ð sake of ð people who actually have to live wið ð consequences of your privileged decision making.

Some people don't have ð luxury of being able to karen at ð two party system and demand to see democracy's manager to choose to not let fascists get into office so ðat ð not fascists "learn ðeir lesson"

[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 30 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Here are some of the common complaints about Jill Stein:

As the Green Party candidate she will pull in more third party votes than most (if not all) of the other parties. While those views are usually trivial in number in the grand scheme of things, they can have a big impact in let seeing states.

She has not gone out of her way to criticize Trump, and has instead treated both Trump and Harris as being equally bad, even though Trump is arguably much more anti-environmental than Harris.

This isn't her first time coming in as what's seen as a Democrat vote-spoiler candidate.

From the perspective of some, she pops up every four years to try to take votes off the Democrat candidate and then seemingly disappears for another four years.

She has a bit of a cult of personality thing going on - arguably moreso than either Harris or Biden.

She's in her mid-70s, and so no spring chicken. This has become more of a concern this cycle because a) she's for years older than she was in 2020 (obviously), b) age has become more of a point of concern given how both Biden and Trump have apparently seen marked cognitive decline at less than 10 years her seniors.

There's some evidence to suggest she is cozy with Putin, who is clearly does not have America's best interests in mind. For example, she was photographed at a fancy dinner sitting at the same table as him and several of his 'crew' (among others). The common excuse for this is "she didn't choose her seating!" But equally there's no reason she couldn't have got up and moved or left the event.

Photo of the dinner in question, with labels:

I'm sure there are other points I'm missing. But those are the ones that spring to mind.

[–] tiefling@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

She solely exists so Trump supporters can try to steal votes from Kamala by pretending to be progressive. The US uses an undemocratic FPTP voting system, which means that there can only be two viable candidates at any given time.

[–] jeffw@lemmy.world 8 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

She certainly captures more liberals and lefties and Trump supporters. That’s why Dems hate her so much

[–] Sundial@lemm.ee 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

That's pretty nuch it. Every election cycle has 3rd party candidates. This time it's gotten more attention in the media because there's a good chunk of people, mainly Arabs, who are refusing to vote Democrat as "fuck you" to Harris and her support of Israel.

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 7 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

If Trump wins, the Palestinians will get even more fucked. That'll teach Harris.

[–] basmati@lemmus.org 1 points 1 hour ago

There is no "more fucked" than genocide. You literally cannot orange man bad this one. Take responsibility and at least admit full unadulterated support for genocide isn't a deal breaker for you at the very least.

[–] Sundial@lemm.ee 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

They're already getting fucked.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Yes we are, but ðere's such a þing as degrees, and we're talking a potential shift in degrees here ðat is comparable to ð detonation of a fucking nuke.

If you þink ð solution to Harris being soft on Israel is to let ð guy who handed Bibi west bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights back into office, you are eiðer a knowing zionist agent, or an unknowing one, eiðer way, you need to SÐFU.

[–] Sundial@lemm.ee 1 points 1 hour ago

One look at my comment history would show you just how incorrect you are about me. I'm not misinforming anyone. There is a big "Abondan Harris" campaign by the Arab-American population because of what's happening. And it's only gotten stronger over the past 12 months because of their continued support of Israel.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world -2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

There is a meme going around blaming Jill Stein for "spoiling" the 2016 race. I was developing an relatively simple analysis to show how and why its ridiculous to propose that Jill Stein "spoiled" the 2016 election. Specifically, in no race did the green party candidate get more votes than the libertarian candidate. A great example is the headline meme that was up about a day ago here: https://lemmy.world/post/21038666?scrollToComments=true

https://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/

So in Michigan, ~50k voters went to Stein. In that race, 170k went to Gary Johnson.

Pennsylvania, 48,912 to Stein, and for Gary Johnson, 142,653.

Wisconsin, 30,980 to Stein, and for Gary Johnson, 106,442.

So taking these three as an example, in none of these races, if you were to 'remove' the 3rd party candidates, would Hillary have won.

Likewise, the meme assumes that "all" of Green Party voters go to Hillary, and some how the Gary Johnson voters just evaporate.

It doesn't really make sense at any level. Its part of a broader pattern of voter intimidation that seems to be mostly focused on defending a candidate that has been shown to be lacking, not at all different than what we saw in 2016. I didn't bother finishing the analysis after a very brief look at the data, because it was so patently absurd to suggest that Jill Stein spoiled anything for anyone in 2016, when she literally did not beat Johnson in a single race.

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 9 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

Your argument is a false dichotomy.

Just because the Libertarians ran a spoiler candidate too does not magically make Jill Stein not a spoiler.

[–] Hotspur@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 hours ago

I mean the real comparison is just: did she get enough votes, in states that Clinton lost, where if those people had all voted for Clinton, then Clinton would have won that state. I don’t know the answer, but even if the numbers did cover the margin, I think saying Stein is therefore a spoiler is problematic for a few reasons:

  1. It ignores the very real number of voters who chose not to vote democratic or vote at all simply because of Clinton as candidate.
  2. it ignores massive mistakes made by a hubristic campaign that couldn’t fathom losing to trump.
  3. it supposes that people that voted green, would have gritted their teeth and instead voted Clinton, which is not a safe assumption.

Regarding OP’s argument: if Stein is a spoiler, than the libertarians are also spoilers. Since her being a spoiler assumes a majority of her votes would have gone democratic, we can take the same liberty and assume the libertarians would have instead opted for trump. If they had larger vote numbers than the Green Party got, as OP is saying above, then they cancel out greens spoiler-ness, and in fact represent a slight spoiler in favor of the democrats. I don’t really buy this read for the reasons I mentioned above, but OP’s point still kinda stands.

I’m not personally interested in voting for stein, I’ve heard enough weird stuff about her over the years that I’m not comfortable with her as a candidate. But I don’t buy the constant messaging that “third party votes are wasted votes”. My assumption with people that post these things is that they’re not suggesting it’s OK to not vote. And assumably, they also don’t want you to vote, but vote for the opposition. So it’s just the same old thing: vote the way I want you to.

[–] basmati@lemmus.org 0 points 1 hour ago

Those votes would not ever go to Clinton, therefore there is no spoiler effect. Green party voters would sit out the election than support forever war (Clinton's foreign policy) or genocide (Harris' foreign policy).

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Your argument is a false dichotomy.

You should look up what a false dichotomy is. A false dichotomy is typically when someone presents two choices as the only possible options, ignoring other possibilities. My argument doesn't do that. I'm arguing you have no-idea where Stein voters (or Johnson voters for that matter) would go if not for Stein. Also, you may not have noticed it, but you quite literally engage in false dichotomy in your response.

You are still making the assumption that voters only have two choices. No matter how much you've convinced yourself that's the case; its not reality. Voters don't have to vote. Voters can vote Republican or however they want. No candidate is owed a vote, however much Democrats want that to be a thing.

The entire rhetorical approach you are engaging in is why Kamala has been slipping in the polls, and its precisely why Hillary lost in 2016. If you want your proffered candidate to win, you actually have to convince people that they are worth voting for. And unlike Kamala, Trump is out there doing that. Stein is out there doing that. Chase Oliver is actually doing that (you don't know who that is do you?), and guess what? Oliver is beating Stein in most swing states.

The claim that Stein is spoiling when they are polling at literally less than measurable numbers is so obviously idiotic, no one worth respecting would give it anything more than a cursory swipe.