Green politicians from across Europe on Friday called on U.S. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to withdraw from the race for the White House and endorse Democrat Kamala Harris instead.
“We are clear that Kamala Harris is the only candidate who can block Donald Trump and his anti-democratic, authoritarian policies from the White House,” Green parties from countries including Germany, France, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland, Estonia, Belgium, Spain, Poland and Ukraine said in a statement, which was shared with POLITICO ahead of publication
Haha they must be new to this, Jill Stein isn’t running for president, she is running to split the vote like they paid her to.
Of course they know that. They’re saying this to make exactly this point. While the average US voter will be entirely unaware of and oblivious to what some pinkos from cheese eating surrender monkey land say, potential green voters just might take notice.
If they haven’t already, they won’t.
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I don’t like that phrase because it was used a lot by the american right when france refused to support them in the Iraq war and by far right figures in the UK during Brexit.
Of course. The way it was used here was to make fun of exactly those people.
If I recall correctly it originally started as something said by Willie in the simpsons but then a lot of people started saying it in real life to insult people based on nationality which is kinda fucked up and was condemned as xenophobic.
How do you do, savage from the colonies?
Good. I was apart of the Green Party, I left when I learned they were planning of running a candidate this year, when internally, we were floating around the idea of NOT running a candidate.
That’s interesting insider info. Was the reason for not fielding a candidate because of this particular issue (splitting the vote)?
Can’t say exactly, it was just floated around, I’m guessing it was for that specific reason, but that was around the time I was thinking of leaving for other reasons, they are VERY unorganized as a party and it really, really bothered me. The way smaller Transhumanist Party seems more organized than the Green Party.
Probably because running a presidential candidate is a waste of money unless your intent is to split the vote.
Start local, gain influence, work your way up.
Isn’t it too late for it to matter? At this point, she’s on the ballots that she’s on, isn’t she?
Especially for states like Oregon that are primarily vote by mail. I already have my ballot, and Stein withdrawing won’t keep people from voting for her
Yes, her name is already on the ballots, like RFK Jr is still on the ballots in many states, but the hope is her supporters will listen to her endorsement. Just because a person’s name is on the ballot doesn’t force people to vote for that person. Some people have voted already, some will continue to vote for her out of protest, some will continue to vote for her because they didn’t hear she dropped out or didn’t care. But the hope is enough people will hear that she dropped out and endorsed Harris that their votes will come through for Harris.
When I went to vote last week and saw RFK Jr.'s name was still on the Indiana ballot, I burst out laughing.
Response from Jill: Can you outbid Putin?
lolbruh. she takes her orders from putin.
Why can’t a Democrat with a lot of money ask her what it would cost
Cuz Putin can outbid all democratic politicians put together
This notion is probably the must infuriating thing. A foreign head of state can use cash to influence our election overtly with no criminal charge for those involved.
It’s so messed up.
Why does she need to do this before the election? They can just form a coalition after the election if Kamala doesn’t win
This is to elect the President. In a presidential system, as in the US, you choose the leader of the executive portion of government separately from the legislative leader. In a parliamentary system, as many countries in Europe use, the public doesn’t choose the leader of the executive portion of government. Instead, they just vote for representatives in the legislative portion, and then those legislators form a coalition (if necessary) and choose a leader of the executive (the prime minister). The closest analog to coalition forming in the presidential election is doing exactly what the Greens are proposing above – having a candidate drop out and endorse another, with the hopes that they can sway their supporters. It’s basically what JFK Jr did, for example, with Trump.
While hypothetically the US could form legislative coalitions, in practice, due to the way the US electoral system works, US parties are essentially equivalent to electoral coalitions in parliamentary systems already – we already form “big tent” parties necessary to control a house. In the US, the closest analog to this sort of thing actually happening after the elections is when you hear about something like “an independent legislator who caucuses with the Democrats”. The US also has weak party discipline compared to many countries in Europe, so legislators are much less constrained to vote along party lines anyway.
Different systems, function kinda differently.
That’s not how the US electoral system works.
The US doesn’t really do coalitions. In Congress we kind of do, but since the presidency is elected by the citizens, not like a prime minister being elected out of the legislature, they only have their own party membership.
Ie. All elections are for single member districts using a first past the post system, which means only one person can win and any vote for someone who isn’t in the top two is pretty much a waste.
It’s a shitty system.
which means only one person can win and any vote for someone who isn’t in the top two is pretty much a waste.
Parliamentary systems basically do the same thing as presidential systems, just in a different way.
There are only two really viable parties, and other parties can only really influence things via the spoiler effect in the US.
Yes. However, there are also very few actually viable party coalitions in most parliamentary systems. Like, the far-left party probably isn’t going to enter into coalition with the far-right party. And neither has anywhere near enough support to actually determine the executive. Any coalition they enter into is going to mandate a lot of compromises from what their particular party program – what we in the US typically call a “party platform” is. So…they aren’t really an option for running the executive, even if they show up on the ballot.
In a parliamentary system, the parties make their promises to the public. Then the vote happens. Then there’s some horse-trading, and parties throw out some – not known to the public at the time of election – of their electoral promises, and create a coalition.
It’s true that in the US system, you basically only have two viable parties…but that’s because in the US, parties are more analogous to party coalitions in some parliamentary systems. Basically, in the US, the horse-trading happens before the election, so you see the coalition that you can vote on at the time of the election. The parties in a parliamentary system with many parties are maybe more analogous to the caucuses. So, we don’t have a “party for black people” in the US…but we do have the Congressional Black Caucus, which (mostly) operates inside the big-tent Democratic party.
The fact that parties expect to likely have to throw out some promises in a parliamentary system also comes with some issues. The UK uses FPTP rather than proportional representation, so tends away from having coalitions, but is a parliamentary system, and can do so. It is very likely, from what I’ve read, that the reason that the UK Brexited was because of some jiggery-pokery associated with this. Basically, the Conservative Party in the UK had promised its voters a referendum on UK membership in the EU. However, at the time this promise was made, the Conservative leadership expected not to be able to achieve a majority, that they would have to form a coalition with the Liberal Democratic party, as they had previously. The Liberal Democratic party was strongly in favor of being in the EU, and probably would have required them to not hold such a referendum as a condition of being in coalition. Holding a referendum is not actually something that the Conservative Party likely wanted to actually do. As a result, the Conservatives could make such a promise and get the electoral support from doing so…with the expectation that they would never have to actually follow through on it, because they’d get the opportunity to throw out some of their electoral promises to voters during the coalition-forming process. However, they did better than expected, and didn’t form a coalition, and were stuck holding a Brexit referendum. You won’t get that in the US, since the executive makes their promises prior to the election.
NGOs, like the EFF or Greenpeace or the like, also tend to play a larger role in the process in the US, which provides for a lot of options as to involvement in advocacy. In Europe, some countries developed “Pirate Parties”, political organizations that work something akin to the EFF here (though there’s also the EDRi in Europe, it acts as more of a coordinating institution).
One other issue that parliamentary systems run into is that after the election, they have to decide on a coalition to choose the new executive. This usually doesn’t take too long, but sometimes the legislators don’t agree in the post-election horse-trading process, and the result is that no executive gets chosen (or, in some cases, as in Italy, a “technocratic” executive gets chosen for the public). Belgium and Northern Ireland have recently had extended periods without an executive (which, in their terminology, is “without a government”), which hampers their ability to do much. In a presidential system, after the election, you know who is going to be running the executive.
In the US, the Big Two parties also hold primary elections, which permits you, as a member of the public (usually registered as a voter of that party, though there are even some exceptions to that), to choose which candidates you want your party to run. That isn’t a constitutional requirement, and some parties do not do that. However, it’s also input that frequently isn’t available to the electorate in Europe, where legislative candidates are selected internally by the party.
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Jill Stein
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