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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Why would anyone vote 3rd party? They can just stay home and continue their nap.
Because to some their eternal purity is way more important than anything that could actually happen as a result of their actions. To throw your vote away in a protest that no party has ever cared about keeps your hands clean of any individual aspect of that party you don’t like and you can claim the moral high ground by “trying” to enact change, but at what cost to everything around you?
It’s like the cartoon of the people living in a cave after climate change ruins everything saying “at least for a short time we made a lot of money for shareholders.” except it would be “at least I didn’t vote for Genocide Joe.”
Because y’all claim to live in a democracy, so let people voice their opinions as votes.
EDIT: Lmao, look at the downvoted. HOW DARE PEOPLE VOTE FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT I WANT
I’d rather be able to vote for more then just the two parties. But I am also realistic and letting trump win so you can vote for someone who will never win is foolish.
“I refuse to make any compromises” is the OPPOSITE of democracy.
Look, if people feel very strongly about something, let them voice their opinion on it through a vote, as intended. That’s what democracy is for. If your democracy doesn’t work and always makes you vote strategically, making you disregard your own positions as a voter, then maybe your democracy isn’t really a democracy and you should start working on that. A strategically cast vote won’t magically repair your broken system. Anyway, compromises are for political parties and politicians, not for the average voter that just wants to voice their opinion.
What the fuck are you talking about, compromise and strategic voting are fundamental cornerstones of Democracy. Not some kind of failure.
Exclusively getting everything you want all the time is called autocracy.