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Anything that helps legitimize trump (increase overall pop vote numbers, regardless of loss) or props up green party and stein with a stated intention to get trump elected, in fact "helps trump"
Considering a vote 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, as lip service, but the party doesn't put in meaningful work in interim government outside of a presidential election cycle every 4 years. So it's a meaningless party.
You may think, "I'm in a solid red or blue state where my vote can't influence at the national level", but I 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 as third parties, these are just campaigns driven more by individual candidate ego than a motivation for systemic change.
Those are my thoughts.
I get the logic you put forth. Yet as someone who lives in a more diverse democracy (although it has been getting dangerously more polarized in the recent decades), I'm always baffled by this presumption that a candidate deserves someone's vote by default.
In this case, let's say there aren't any other parties on the ballot other than the Democrats and Republicans. In Michigan specifically you have a voter group, that says that they cannot vote for genocide especially if it is against their own families or people that look like them. And both parties are either promising the continuation thereof or have been engaged in it and have been excluding anything related to addressing it, or people representing that voter group, from their campaign. So the presumption, that if there wasn't a Green Party to vote for that they would be coming out to vote for the Democrats is imho just flawed. They might just as likely stay home.
What I find even more baffling is that this party can't seem to clearly outperform the even more clearly dangerous candidate to democracy. The Arabic or Muslim population in Michigan should not be this decisive for the outcome, if the Democrats were able to actually persuade voters to turn out by delivering an attractive policy plan, thereby earning the votes, instead of just arrogantly thinking, they're entitled to them.
If you live in a democracy where the spoiler effect isn't an issue, then just be happy, whistle, and move on.
If you live in a democracy with first past the poll elections with an electoral college, then you should understand how the system works and vote accordingly.
The spoiler effect is where you vote for someone (Jill Stein in this case) who you think better aligns with your particular set of policy goals, but since they have no chance of actually winning you help the candidate most opposed to your policy goals (Trump in this case) by subtracting votes from the less aligned candidate (Harris in this case) that actually does stand a chance of winning.
It's an ironic outcome of voting in our system. By voting for the person most aligned with your preferences you actually help the person least aligned with your preferences.
Trump is worse on genocide and climate and will be assisted greatly by idiots voting for Jill Stein in swing states.
They've done research and provided these assholes aren't on the ballot, people usually choose a ballot-present major party option instead.
I did say that I live in a democracy with more parties, not that it does not include elections where there is the "first past the post" principle, so I'm familiar with the spoiler effect.
In a US presidential election, your vote supports Israel no matter what party it is for.
If people are actually interested in choice on this and many other issues, they'll have to organize to change the electoral process. But this is America so instead we will sit around in threads like these all day pretending that pissing away your vote with Stein will somehow change that when it obviously will not.