Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently made headlines for calling perennial Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein “predatory” and “not serious.” AOC is right.
Giving voters more choices is a good thing for democracy. But third-party politics isn’t performance art. It’s hard work — which Stein is not doing. As AOC observed: “[When] all you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you’re just showing up once every four years to do that, you’re not serious.”
To be clear: AOC was not critiquing third parties as a whole, or the idea that we need more choices in our democracy. In fact, AOC specifically cited the Working Families Party as an example of an effective third party. The organization I lead, MoveOn, supports their 365-day-a-year efforts to build power for a pro-voter, multi-party system. And I understand third parties’ power to activate voters hungry for alternatives: I myself volunteered for Ralph Nader in 2000, and that experience helped shape my lifelong commitment to people-first politics.
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Just because you don’t hear her name doesn’t mean she isn’t putting in the work
This is about a politician supposedly running for a presidential office, that’s exactly what it means. If people aren’t hearing your name this close to an election you aren’t really trying.
I was responding to a comment that said they never hear her name outside of the presidential election cycle
Yes, we know. Now show us all of her political work that she’s done outside of presidential election cycles.
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the only news I can find for Jill Stein from 2021-2023 is
She was running Cornel West’s presidential campaign at some point, not sure what happened with that [link]
she got in trouble with the FEC for campaign finance issues [link]
I mean… maybe. So was she? What did she accomplish between her presidential bids?
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crickets
It just implies it.
The records of what she does, and the performative activism, which takes place entirely and exclusively during presidential election years - that’s what shows she isn’t putting in the work.
After repeatedly losing in Mass, the only time she runs for anything is for presidential elections. This also demonstrates she isn’t putting in the work, or she would have more involvement in more local elections.