Jill Stein Supporters
The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.
In my opinion, voters who see what Trump is should do everything they can to defeat him. Voting for Stein would have the opposite effect.
Two important categories of potential Stein voters are:
Voters from heavily blue states who want Harris to win, but think it is safe to vote for Stein.
Voters in swing states who acknowledge that Harris is not as bad as Trump, but are leaning toward taking a principled stand by voting for Stein. What really matters to them is to elect a progressive president (either a much better Democrat or a third-party candidate) in the future. They might vote for Stein, even though it could tip the election to Trump
To blue state, potential Stein voters: because election outcomes can turn on totally unexpected developments, it is important that those of us who dread a second Trump term take nothing for granted, especially since the current Supreme Court might play a role in deciding the election. In 2016, Hillary Clinton had had a very comfortable lead over Trump after the October 7 release of the Access Hollywood tapes, in which Trump is seen boasting about how celebrities like him can grab women by the “pussy." Yet, Trump was able to win the election. On October 28, just eleven days before the election, FBI director James Comey told Congress that the FBI was looking into a batch of possibly sensitive Clinton emails that were discovered on the computer of Anthony Weiner, the disgraced, estranged husband of a top Clinton aide. Comey's letter said that the F.B.I. would review the emails to determine if they improperly contained classified information. The Trump campaign used Comey’s announcement to depict Clinton as a criminal and his supporters started using “lock her up” chants. Comey’s October 28 revelation was almost certainly responsible for Trump’s victory even though two days before election day, Comey cleared Clinton of doing anything illegal.
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In the 2000 election, Bush beat Gore as a result of winning Florida by a mere 537 votes. It wasn’t just the progressive Ralph Nader receiving over 97,000 votes, that cost Gore the election. Because of a major flaw in the ballot design, the infamous Butterfly Ballot, for Palm Beach County, a heavily Democratic and Jewish district, the conservative, outspoken anti-semite Pat Buchanan received an astonishingly large number of votes from Jewish Democrats. It turned out that many Jewish Democrats who marked their ballots thinking it was a vote for Gore had actually voted for Buchanan because of the confusing ballot design.The Republican-controlled Supreme Court gave Bush the victory. In an election that close and the fact Gore would have won had it not been for that unfortunate ballot design, there should have been a major recount; but instead, the Supreme Court used its power to put a sudden halt to ongoing recount efforts in Florida and declared Bush the winner. How much do you trust the current Supreme Court to be a fair arbiter in the upcoming election?
Blue state voters might not want to view their vote merely as what makes sense strategically when considering their own state in isolation. If blue state voters who want Harris to win and yet think it is safe to take a principled stand by voting for Stein, they might be making a catastrophic mistake. Their votes will encourage the idea that the morally correct thing to do is to vote for Stein. Instead, they should only focus on beating Trump, and try to influence swing state voters to vote for Harris. It would help if they make known that, despite their disappointments with the Democrats and their preference for Stein, they will vote for Harris, because of the existential danger that Trump poses.
Blue state Stein voters, it is also important that Harris win the popular vote by as big a margin as possible. Hopefully, this will decrease the amount of post-election violence by MAGA fanatics, and also convince the Republican party to move on from Trump. Even more importantly, it could discourage the Supreme Court from trying to find a way to award the election to Trump as they did for Bush.
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To potential Stein voters in the second category. The dangers to our democracy of a Trump second term are so terrifyingly real that this is not the time to cast a vote for Stein in the hope of either pressuring the Democrats to choose better candidates in the future or helping the Green Party to become a real contender in future elections. This is the wrong time for that kind of gamble, because if Trump wins, future elections might be similar to those in Iran or Putin’s Russia, or might not happen at all.
Some Stein supporters believe that because Trump is so much worse than Harris, electing him could ultimately work out well. His second term would be so monstruous that the populace would rise up and this would hasten the implementation of truly progressive polices. This seems like a calculation fraught with enormous dangers.
In conclusion, Trump has made clear how dangerous he would be in a second term with no guard rails. If Stein voters are the deciding factor in Trump winning, both Putin and Kim Jong-un will owe them an enormous debt of gratitude.