my takeaway from this profile is that stein is not engage in politics if what we mean by politics is the “art of the possible.” she is, instead, engaged in essentially a vanity exercise rooted in negative partisanship.
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She strikes me as someone who’s unconstrained by reality, and while it may feel freeing, it’s also kind of poisonous. She can really convince herself that she’s after the greater good, that Republicans aren’t using her, that her project is a positive one even when her supporters say thing like this:
Now that Gaza will be a seaside resort after the final great starving, I wonder if these fucking morons realize they got played. Abandon Dearborn for real. Fuck Salam.
I get so used to EU Greens, who I absolutely love as some of the most wonderful people in politics doing some of the greatest things. And then UK Greens are something of a mess because, well, England.
Still, at least UK Greens aren't the despicable dumpster fire Jill Stein and her supporters are.
An ego, like Nader, who runs for their own self gratification, not to actually accomplish anything,damn the consequences. Greens if you want to have an impact try city council person, congress person, governor first - show some results. Otherwise you’re just a bunch of dilettantes -
She's secretly a Captain Planet villain that made her way through the Green Party just to try and absolutely destroy what they stand for by helping republican presidential candidates.
She absolutely is engaging in the art of the possible, insofar as she has reason to believe that it is possible for her to throw the election to Trump.
I don't take seriously a candidate that only shows up on election year. She doesn't show up for four years and then come election time, she tries to take votes away from democrats.
She is an embarrassment, and the Green Party should seek a candidate that actually do the work.
I wouldn’t call a Russian backed foil campaign to get Trump re-elected so that he hands Ukraine to Putin a “vanity exercise.”
Calling it a “vanity exercise” is the real vanity exercise here.
Do you think Jill Stein changed her inherent proclivities and predilections *for* Russia, or do you think Russia exploits Jill Steins inherent proclivities and predilections? To me, it is pretty obviously the latter.
Maybe I'm out of line but many leftists tend to recognise this attitude with libs, for example Ruth Bader Ginsberg holding office longer than strategically reasonable. Yet you dress that character up as an anti-establishment underdog & they will happily give them time & money.
I serve on town meeting in neighboring Belmont. It means I’m one of 36 people from my precinct. I like to think I make a difference but it’s not like I think I could or should win bigger elections.
There are thousands of kids who will never be reunited with their parents thanks to a family separation policy she’s in no small part responsible for, and she doesn’t give a shit.
Agree with this 100%. What all the third party candidates seem to share is an incredible vanity: RFK Jr., Jill Stein, & even Cornel West. You're so vain, you probably think this election is about you.
"the common wisdom is that under Democrats the antiwar movement goes to sleep" crazy disrespect of the last year's incredible antiwar movement that she's trying to sheepdog into enabling a MAGA dictatorship
It's flagrantly anti-historical. Leftists did not shut up during the Obama and Clinton years, but *of course* they were louder and more visible in 2000-2008 because two major wars had just started!! Go back a little further and there was tons of anti-war activism in LBJ's time.
And what Stein thinks "the antiwar movement" even is, in the US, I have no idea. I'm 52. During my adult life, I've been part of many protests but I wouldn't say there has ever been a real movement; I can't imagine what her criteria are for "asleep" vs. "awake". Iraq was its own thing; so is Gaza.
That's not to belittle anyone's work. There's worthwhile activism, and even if it didn't stop any wars, it fed into other social justice efforts. But that's not a movement; it's mostly the same people continuing to protest. The Afghanistan war was ignored by Americans in general for 20 years.
I don't think there's a "the" anti-war left. That's what I meant about there not being a movement; there are groups doing different things. Some did give Trump a pass, others didn't, and others were focusing on other dangerous Trump shit because there were so many options.
But conversely, when Obama and Biden were in, people who were concerned about the drone war absolutely did give them shit for that. Some of those were already anti-Democratic-Party radicals, who obviously didn't "go to sleep". Stein is just pissed that others didn't utterly disavow Democrats.
She is the epitome of the fake leftist - committed to her own sloganeering but totally uninterested in the work her ostensible goals require, or the outcomes of her actions.
My problem with the Green party isn't their ideas; its their lack of a political project. Voting for Stein is a waste of time because even if she won, she'd have no congressional mandate. Pushing the dems left has to come from congress. You need that 15-20 seat bloc like the Tea Party had
But Ralph was still a dud, at least later in life. I drove him around Madison back in the day for an event my organization was sponsoring. "Eccentric" does not fully describe the weirdness.
That’s what the Green Party became. A singularly unserious third party. And I say that as someone who is an unrepentant Nader voter and often voted Green in San Francisco
I was proud to vote for Ralph Nader in 2000 because it meant something and because I lived in a safe state. Jill Stein is the Jim Belushi of Ralph Nader.
that the green party doesn’t exist except as a ballot line is also part of the problem here — there is nothing that tethers Stein’s behavior to the lives and interests of actual people.
it's a form of Stolen Political Valor -- they are free-riding off the reputation of European Greens who actually did the work to build a progressive movement.
I was just thinking about that, especially after watching the Greens have great gains in the latest UK election. I feel like Americans have no idea what an actual Green party is because Stein has completely obscured core messages.
The mayor of my town and majority of our city council were Green Party before KH was even on a California ballot. I get you think we owe you our votes for some reason, but as a registered Green Party voter I'm telling you we don't vote for genocide, republicans, libertarians or democrats.
Strange. I've spent some time with their 2020 candidate, Howie Hawkins, as he's based in my hometown. Not sure when they veered fascist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howie_Hawkins
Howie definitely seems a lot more reasonable than Stein, and certainly has better positions on foreign policy (iirc, he's far more critical of Russia's invasion of Ukraine). Not sure why they didn't run him a second time.
People are not their parents. We call that guilt by association.
Additionally, if it’s true that she’s a narcissist their alleged pleas to dissuade her from running may have only enraged her and made them outcasts within their own family and made her more committed to running. 🤷♀️
This is true, but Canadian Greens are an entirely different organization from Jill Stein Greens. They're small but exist as a party.
And in at least two ridings I'm aware of, they split the vote with the NDP and ended up throwing the riding to the Tories, which...is sub-optimal, to say the least.
I know all of that. My point is that there’s one jurisdiction where the Green Party looks set to have influence on power and it will be interesting to see what happens.
there is something truly ugly about a person who knows they cannot win. knows that their actions may make life worse for millions of people. and not only goes for it but it gets indignant if you point it out. “it’s not my fault if they lose!” well, why are you running? at least own your intentions!
I hope that she's not mentioned at all. Her desperate desire for adulation washed away by the ravages of time, eventually it will be as if she had never existed at all.
She (like 34-felon) needs to be a history lesson for our children. An example that they/we need to learn from & never admire. Education is the only way (hopefully) to prevent it from happening again.
She's a grifter. She made millions off this vanity project. Everything about her since the start of her involvement displays little else but massive narcissism. She found the right marks which is why she won't leave. (I agree with Greens on many things way more than Dems. But it's a FAKE OUT.)
Mostly my feeling is a person who is this stupid and narcissistic would actually be bad at being president and that is reason enough not to vote for them regardless of the rest of the implications
We have a good recent case study for why this is a bad idea, even if it's more bombastic than she is
it's okay, if she can help enough Republicans win and things turn out so terrible that the 'system' collapses, then we will all finally be ready to turn to her for leadership, this is surely how it works
RFK jr has always been in the race because he wants Trump to win. That was basically the explicit premise of his candidacy. The moment he started hurting trump more than helping, he pulled out.
My sense is RFKv2 is an idiot. But Stein is different: she seems to know exactly what she's doing. You can't be so evasive in interviews if you don't know what to evade.
I think you're falling into the trap of assuming that all votes that go to Stein would otherwise go to the democrats, instead of just not showing up or voting at all. There is no reason to believe that Green party voters would vote democrat if not for the Greens on the ballot.
The only people I know who are voting green in this or any election would either a) otherwise vote democrat or b) not vote at all and are EXPLICITLY being contrarian in an attempt to "punish" dems for being insufficiently/the "wrong kind" of leftist.
Is that more or less ugly than Kamala Harris supporting the mass murder of the Palestinians and Lebanese? The Greens are running because they are the only choice for Americans who don't support genocide. Those of us who oppose genocide are glad we have that choice
The major problem with your premise is that it requires the Green Party to be a serious political entity (it is not) and for the US to take third parties seriously enough to consider them electable (it does not).
If you are so horrified by the genocide in Gaza (as you should be) that you cannot vote in the 2024 US presidential election, then abstain. It is tragic that these are the only two legitimate options. By the way, why do you think Trump moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem?
after 2000 the Greens decided to chase a national position in hopes of gaining funding and recognition as a nationally potent 3rd party, the right wing dark money network worked on winning local seats to build national power, guess whose plan is paying off?
Yeah. Since watching AOC (among others no doubt) call Stein out re: her failure to grow the green movement during her time as leader I have understood Jill Stein through that lens. And that tells me all I need to know.
This is why I’m glad that NYS has the Working Families Party, an org which, while imperfect, has had some actual wins and works within the system in a helpful way
NY and VT allowing electoral fusion really helps there. You can have a new party that stands for something and don't split the vote from their supporters' second, more mainstream, choice
Her rise always looked made up and empty to me. Last elections, there were so many bots spamming every social media with her “campaign” that it looked like a psy op. And anyway, voting for her is basically diluting the vote against the GOP at this point. Poor choice.
The amazing thing about Stein's Gaza-centric campaign - which you can see in this pic - is that it's not even got much traction in Michigan. Trump has been far more successful with his pure "punish Harris by electing me and I'll get peace, details tbd" message.
@daveweigel.bsky.social why do you think that people are angry with Harris? Might it be sending unlimited weapons to Israel with which to kill their loved ones? https://youtu.be/1tOKJlLHg14
Dr Tariq Haddad after losing 175 relatives in Gaza.
Would it hurt Harris to show sympathy, rather than scorn?
That a) Israel killed Palestinians with US precision-guided missiles,
b) President Joe Biden sent $18.7 billion in US weapons to Israel since October 7th,
c) Biden said Harris participated in "every major decision" and affirmed that to Politico.
RCV is what we need, but the implementation of it at the federal level for presidential elections would require dissolving the electoral college or the speaker of the house would forever get to pick the president.
Obviously there are no quick & easy solutions. I’m just not sure how long the electoral college can go on. Something has to give if minority conservative views continue to shrink in population size but also hold more than 50% of the 3 federal branches.
Agree. Unfortunately the best workaround the get rid of the EC is the law that several states have passed that gives their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. You'd have to get every state to adopt rank choice for those to be compatible. It's so messy.
Has that happened in places with RCV, like Maine? I wouldn't expect it to since there is no Green party organization to speak of besides the Stein-aligned grifters.
But the only way to have an effective green party without multiple constitutional amendments (which are impossible in the current political reality) is to simply bull one of the existing parties into green-ness. A single-issue party simply can't achieve critical mass in this structure.
You won’t catch me defending the two party system, but there is room down at the state level for third parties and in some states, like New York, it can even be meaningful.
Greens gave up on that: which is a shame and a natural place where organizing electoral reform could take place.
Part of it is that our parties don’t operate like parties in other democracies, they end up being like the coalitions between parties in parliamentary systems. Not ideal, but the result is usually similar.
In other words, the real “Green Party” is not the registered Green Party, it’s a Dem faction.
Right, but the end result of them winning at local levels is still "the Dems become greener to get those voters back," not "the Green party becomes a force unto itself" IMO. And it'd be good to see that happen, I just don't think it'd be successful even at that level for more than a couple cycles.
I’m not a Stein fan, but find her spoiler threat to be exaggerated. She appeals to a permanently aggrieved 1% that don’t vote D or R ever, many of them are NPP. There’s plenty of registered Gs who vote D pragmatically. In all my GOTV I’ve never met a person who would vote D if Stein was out.
I think the threat of Stein is that she wants to be a scapegoat. It fuels the cranks and confuses our post-mortems. Very selfish, destructive behavior though I agree.
I looked it up, i didn’t realize she was once elected to a local seat and quit to have a doomed run for governor. More like Lee Carter or Sawant than Bernie sanders maybe
I think the fact that she's never won office in hard-left eastern MA (town board to gov to POTUS is a leap!) says something about her ego, her wish to be in power vs being a public servant. She's not a local organizer/voice in local elections here, seems more about the national attention
There are half a dozen or so Dem state reps running unopposed here in Seattle/King County. Greens could be appearing on the general election ballot against them completely by default simply by filing a candidate. (which is cheap and easy in Washington)
It's not a huge amount - I would call it "barely statistically significant" (which is enough to matter in any swing state!) - but the amount of people whose politics are exactly this is deeply disappointing.
I mean, that's an incredibly silly thing to say. Elections in the US are regularly won on significantly less votes than that thanks to the EC. Winning in a landslide is the exception in the US, not the norm.
The problem with Jill stein and the green party is that they exist purely to critique the democrats, rather then organize at a state level, they draw all attention they can on their presidential candidate, rather then any of their other candidates.
Why not work with smaller progressive organizations to get elected in smaller state elections? Why not rally progressives towards smaller, but achievable victories? There's so much one can do from the executive office, a progressive party ought to focus on building itself up on a smaller level.
Usually, the ones that end up in the republican camp don't like the democrats because of the civil rights act ... the people that end up in the green camp have more esoteric reasons
Reminds me of some of Assange's early sentiments which seemed left of center in some ways but were much more anti American than anything else if I recall correctly. My memory is fuzzy on this though.
I remember you described a lot of Trump voters as viewing politics through a sort of ironic detachment and I can’t think of a better description of Stein’s worldview
There's an interesting story to be written about how the Green Party went from a near-viable left alternative to a cesspit of vanity candidates backed by their own enemies.
Before Stein, the Green Party was pushing for renewable energy. Renewables threaten to diminish the value of the oil and gas that Putin's power depends on.
So install a Kremlin agent to focus on anti-vax and herbals.
she's almost the worst kind of cynical 'politician'... she literally doesn't have to deliver anything. Just collect her salary, spend her budget and keep herself amused in between.
Young voters fall for it every time, too. They are too chickenshit to actually say they want Republicans/Trump to win and Democrats to lose, so they just say "I am voting Green to make a statement!"
I mean ok but the idea that she’s diverting Dem votes seems really overdetermined. I’ve known a decent number of Green voters over the years and it’s safe to say that if they didn’t have an insurgent party to vote for they just wouldn’t vote at all.
I think you mean “Dem votes” because that’s what I said, and I think it’s implied by what you said about her wanting to tank the Dems as well as by the Harris campaign’s evident concern about her to the point that they’re running anti-Stein ads.
Thanks. This largely tracks with my experience. My only real quibble is extending their assumptions back to the 2000 election (b/c I voted then and everything was completely different) and failing to mention the Supreme Court or the Gore campaign’s decision to concede which IMO were primary causes.
If you’re too corrupt or just can’t be bothered to have better policies you can always revert to convoluted ad hominem attacks to defend your political position instead.
She wouldn't do shitall to end it anyways. All the issues she stands against politically, she invests her personal finances in. That's all it'll take for her to drop the Israel ramblings, offer her financial gain.
I remember Harold Stassen who ran perpetually as a third party candidate in the presidential elections but I also remember Ralph Nader and the unfortunate situation that arose in Florida. https://tinyurl.com/bdhvzmmx
It’s obvious, and as an overseas observer i see AOC is more green than Jill Stein.
I think the issue that JS is overriding the frustration of arab/muslim/left leaning/pro palestine 🇵🇸 voters from the democratic party inaction— who will get them Trump, who is worse for them in all aspects.
I think you’d want to ask what they said about why they endorsed, which in David Duke’s case for Stein is bc he wants Russia to win in Ukraine and so does Stein, and in the Cheneys’ case for Harris is bc they think Trump is a unique threat to the country and want the only viable alternative to win
For Dick Cheney, it depends on the reason. He's capable of cynical strategic reasoning, and he has SOME conception of the common good (even if, most of the time, he gets wrong what precisely serves it).
The KKK is just a pure hate group. They only endorse someone who shares their level of hate.
That's why it was a big deal when Hillary Clinton specifically mentioned Kissinger as someone she would take foreign policy advice from. We weren't all assuming that just because he supported her. If Harris says she plans to take foreign policy advice from Dick Cheney, that's when we'd see issues.
She's a deliberate spoiler and nothing in that article changed my mind on that. She knows EXACTLY what she's doing (and she KNOWS who's helping her do it, too) She's as shameless a liar as Trump.
It's more than a vanity exercise. It's a Trumpian scam.
Jill Stein is a Russian asset and therefore is working hard to elect Trump. A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump-Putin.
Jill Stein is a grifter, the money her campaign got in 2016 for that recount debacle was not paid back as promised.
And the Green Party is not a political party
So many people are getting away Scot-free. This is why we are in this predicament. Because assholes like Merrick garland are to chicken shit to do their jobs
If jill Stein wasn't a fraud, she would have encouraged more Green Party legislators at the state level for 2018, and increasing the numbers every cycle.
Instead she pretended to care in 2016, took the recount money, and in 2024, she scurried out like a roach to muck up the vote
There's this fringe left idea that what's most important is having the purest ideals and sullying them with power can only harm that so the ultimate goal is total powerlessness
Nobody on the left demands or talks about "purity" thats a centrist talking point projected onto the left. The left just has DIFFERENT values than centrists. Lots of infighting on the left. The concept of "purity" is more a right wing/Nazi aligned obsession.
They might not use the word "purity," but that's absolutely what they're talking about when they say they won't vote for Harris even though they know Trump is the alternative.
No it's not. Leftists generally don't believe in purity. We never use that term, or think of ourselves as superior. We just have different moral values than centrists do. Centrists are always projecting that idea onto us, because they feel shame, they feel like the baddies.
"I won't vote for X candidate because I disagree with them about [insert single issue/very limited set when opponent's views are the opposite of the ideologue's]" absolutely IS ideological purity. And people DID use those terms for Clinton vs Bernie, as well as now against Biden/Harris wrt Israel.
One virtue of Europe’s multiparty systems is you can be a 4% minority party and still get actual representation that requires your voters and MPs to actually think about gaining power & what it is you want to do with it
What does it say about the Green Party that they continue to let this nihilist run over and over? Fingers crossed she’s simply too old next time to emerge from her 4 year cicada cycle.
Which is also stupid of them, because if they want to see America burn down, they should be starting fires, not doing nihilistic electoral politics. Trump in all likelihood won't burn the American empire down. He'll just make it significantly worse for most people living in its shadow.
There’s a curious group that don’t see “closer to what I want” as a strategy, but rather decide burning it all to the ground is better - clearly not having thought it through to the logical end. It’s going to suck for them but even more for their POC and LGBT friends. But shrug, I guess. Purity!
That's what really gets me: that she just keeps running over and over. If the Green Party was serious, it would at least try new candidates. But they like it this way because she gets in the news as an election spoiler. No way the NYT would be interviewing a new candidate nobody has heard of.
There was a brief time in the mid to late 90s when it looked like it might be building a real left alternative party. Anyone who took that seriously left after 2000, the only people remaining in the Greens are the grifter freaks.
The problem with the Green Party is that anyone who cares any getting things done would quickly realize that it's far easier to win by winning the Democratic primary than to run as a third party in the general.
My take is she’s engaged in narcissism flailing against repeated narcissistic injury. People with their own narcissistic tendencies are attracted to this. “Nobody recognizes how smart I am. Jill gets it.”
As I understand it, she was always looking to help Trump win. Anyone with a platform like the Green Party in 2016 who is meeting with Putin is not seriously supporting any leftist agenda.
So I know this Darth Vader guy blew up a planet killed a few kids but I need to hear more about this princess Leia person.. and now Lando Calrissian wants 1% of the vote?
jill stine wont stop fighting... until the election is over and then it is crickets from her and her party for 3 years until the next election. if she really cared she would be running for other offices and at least showing up for other left leaning or green party candidates in the off season
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Still, at least UK Greens aren't the despicable dumpster fire Jill Stein and her supporters are.
She is an embarrassment, and the Green Party should seek a candidate that actually do the work.
-NYT
Calling it a “vanity exercise” is the real vanity exercise here.
( I mean, you have that right, but at least be honest with the impact)
They’re a cancer.
The slogan is the point.
DEMOCRACY
that she seeks to kill
Aint no way there’s not some green in play for her trouble
Sheesh, Jill -- wake up!
Additionally, if it’s true that she’s a narcissist their alleged pleas to dissuade her from running may have only enraged her and made them outcasts within their own family and made her more committed to running. 🤷♀️
And in at least two ridings I'm aware of, they split the vote with the NDP and ended up throwing the riding to the Tories, which...is sub-optimal, to say the least.
They never said, you don't know, maybe what they meant is they can't vote for such a puny little evil
We have a good recent case study for why this is a bad idea, even if it's more bombastic than she is
https://x.com/justin4all2/status/1848152786061635967
To any Dem candidates reading this (and I'm confident there are hundreds): Your job is to make the fascists lose.
https://couriernewsroom.com/news/kate-barr-im-running-to-lose-in-north-carolina-and-expose-that-its-impossible-for-me-to-win/
I wish it's more common in other states...
https://youtu.be/1tOKJlLHg14
Dr Tariq Haddad after losing 175 relatives in Gaza.
Would it hurt Harris to show sympathy, rather than scorn?
b) President Joe Biden sent $18.7 billion in US weapons to Israel since October 7th,
c) Biden said Harris participated in "every major decision" and affirmed that to Politico.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/02/white-house-harris-policy-decisions-00176918
I would love to be able to realistically consider voting for a Green Party candidate or other non-major option.
If ranked choice were a possibility, I suspect that the quality of the Green Party candidates would improve tremendously.
Obviously there are no quick & easy solutions. I’m just not sure how long the electoral college can go on. Something has to give if minority conservative views continue to shrink in population size but also hold more than 50% of the 3 federal branches.
That it exists merely as a spoiler operation which enables the worst of America’s right wing is just experience icing on the cake.
Greens gave up on that: which is a shame and a natural place where organizing electoral reform could take place.
In other words, the real “Green Party” is not the registered Green Party, it’s a Dem faction.
Utterly non-existant as a political party
Pretty sure you could count the number of Greens that ran statewide in the primary on one hand.
in a presidential year.
in the everGREEN state.
Rank the following things in order of how bad they are:
a) the Democratic party
b) Bashar al-Assad
She ate dinner at his damn table!
Before Stein, the Green Party was pushing for renewable energy. Renewables threaten to diminish the value of the oil and gas that Putin's power depends on.
So install a Kremlin agent to focus on anti-vax and herbals.
Rubles aren’t blue
Jill Stein loves Putin
And DGAF about you.
But they’re not a real party.
I think the issue that JS is overriding the frustration of arab/muslim/left leaning/pro palestine 🇵🇸 voters from the democratic party inaction— who will get them Trump, who is worse for them in all aspects.
Her job is destroying democracy, her employer is Putin, and I assume she’s paid well for her work.
They don't care if they give win to DT.
I wonder if Green party will get more GOP voters who don't like DT, but can't vote Dem.
The KKK is just a pure hate group. They only endorse someone who shares their level of hate.
Jill Stein is a Russian asset and therefore is working hard to elect Trump. A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump-Putin.
And the Green Party is not a political party
Instead she pretended to care in 2016, took the recount money, and in 2024, she scurried out like a roach to muck up the vote
"I won't vote for X candidate because I disagree with them about [insert single issue/very limited set when opponent's views are the opposite of the ideologue's]" absolutely IS ideological purity. And people DID use those terms for Clinton vs Bernie, as well as now against Biden/Harris wrt Israel.
What is this, if not a "purity" comment?
https://bsky.app/profile/theboobla32.bsky.social/post/3l6yjsgp2h32h
It’s a bounce house filled with the kind of kids who used to get played by Lyndon LaRouche and a few weird Trotskyite groups.