this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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Political Memes

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The meme is intentionally vague. Is voting third party in an uncontested state "helping Trump"?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Anything that helps legitimize trump (increase overall pop vote numbers, regardless of loss) or props up green party and stein with a publicly stated intention to get trump elected, in fact "helps trump"

It sounds like your vote will be 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, but the party doesn't put in meaningful work in interim government outside of a presidential election cycle every 4 years.

I understand your larger point about living in a solid red or blue state where your vote can't influence at the national level, but I just 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, these are just campaigns driven more by individual candidate ego than a motivation for systemic change.

Those are my thoughts.