Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Leads Stronger National Green Party Poised For Surge in This Years Elections Against Obama and Mitt Romney Campaigns
By Scott Mansfield
Jill Stein is the 2012 Presidential Candidate for the Green Party, of which she has been a member for 12 years. She announced her candidacy in August 2011 after having been asked to by Green Party activists and has since been endorsed by notable political writer Noam Chomsky and former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who for the first time in many years is no longer taking the lead as an independent choice at the polls.
Stein, a native of Illinois was born into the Jewish community there and said of her moral motivations that “From my perspective, the need to do Justice, love mercy was the watchword of my community, the Jewish community where I grew up.” She attended Harvard Medical School and has served with the Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility. She has for years lived in Lexington, Massachusetts and has had a modicum of success in the polls there but saw limited election success.
She was elected the Town of Lexington Town Meeting Representative twice in 2005 and 2008 winning a total 20.6 percent of the vote—which is more or less the same percentage as she earned in other Massachusetts elections. She has unsuccessfully run for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002, House Representative of the same state, and Secretary of the Commonwealth.
Though she did not win the widespread support she would need to win these elections and probably won’t in the presidential run, she represents an important alternative in this upcoming election. She did however receive enough private campaign donations to qualify for the Federal Election Commission to match those contributions federally. She is running on a green platform with environmental concerns, naturally, and has chosen the campaign slogan of “A Green New Deal for America” which she claims is based on the idea of community-based full-time jobs. Of her campaign she has said that it is giving people a choice at the polls to avert another four years of corporate dominated hegemony.
Watching Presidential Candidate Jill Stein
She was invited to speak about her campaign platform on Moyers & Company and said that as part of her Green New Deal she would like to impose a sales tax on Wall Street transactions because it would generate hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue for the federal government and attempt to “rein in this reckless speculation in gambling on Wall Street which is a good thing all around.” She finds it easier to talk about additional taxes than her competition, as she states that the money from these taxes, mainly focused at corporations, the rich, and Wall Street, will give the federal government the revenue they need to jump start the Green economy.
Though Stein may lack the universal appeal that the Democratic and Republican candidates strive for she has reached some groups passed-over by the major parties, having campaigned in Oregon where neither Romney nor Obama have. She attended the pro-legalization festival Hempstalk where she expressed her strong support for the legalization of marijuana, a position that neither front-running candidate is willing to take, which only demonstrates the liberties that independent candidates are privy to in that Stein can say and do things which automatically cause controversy for front-runners.
Michael Ossipoff says
Overall, a good article, but it falls into a few mass-media ruts.
I’ll quote a few passages that I take exception to:
I don’t care what Dr. Stein’s religion is. But, because we’ve never had president from a Jewish background, I feel that emphasizing her religion works against her in the election. I just don’t think that her religion, or, more accurately, her family’s traditional religion, has any relevance to her qualifications for the presidency.
For example, we didn’t hear Roseanne Barr’s Jewish family background being brought up, because the matter has no presidential relevance.
The article said:
Though she did not win the widespread support she would need to win these elections and probably won’t in the presidential run, she represents an important alternative in this upcoming election.
[endquote]
What is the point of making a prediction that a candidate won’t win? It’s only strategically-relevant if you feel that there is an acceptable candidate who is more winnable. Is there one? I expect that most people who like Jill Stein would agree with me that the Democrat isn’t acceptable, and that the Democrats, in general, aren’t acceptable.
We support Dr. Stein because she’s the most winnable acceptable candidate. Plurality’s strategy, when there are unacceptable candidates who could win, is the vote for the most winnable acceptable candidate–to combine our votes on that candidate. That’s Dr. Stein.
Predicting that she won’t win can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. And it’s illogical, because you’re telling it to people whom you presumably would like to vote for her:
“She won’t win, because we won’t vote for her”.
But what if we _did_ vote for her?
As I’ve often pointed out, Democrat voters typically say that they’d prefer someone better, and only reluctantly vote Democrat pragramatically, because they think that the Democrat is the only one who can beat the Republican.
I suggest: Don’t reinforce that pitiably resigned, cowed and pessimisic belief. That’s the tv’s job, to preserve the unliked Republocrat “two party system” that’s really a 1-party system. As Gore Vidal said, we don’t have a 2-party system. We have 1 party with 2 right wings.
As I said before, Democrat and Republican politicians are regarded about as highly as a schoolground drug-dealer. Do you really think that they’d win if people actually voted for what they really want?
Let’s find out, by voting for Dr. Jill Stein in November.
What do you have to lose? The election of a Republican? Big deal. It happens every few years anyway. It wouldn’t be an unprecedented disaster, would it.
Look at it this way: Even if only a few of us vote for Stein instead of Obama, only enough of us to make the Democrat lose, but not enough to electe Stein, what would be the result?:
We’d show the lesser-evil Democrat giveaway voters that their cowardly and resigned giveaway, their pre-emptive surrender, isn’t going to work anymore.
That might be the only way that honest voting will start on a wide scale.
So, if you prefer Dr. Stein to a Democrat, then vote honestly in November.
The article said:
she has said that it is giving people a choice at the polls to avert another four years of corporate dominated hegemony.
[endquote]
Yes. A choice is being offered.
The article said:
Though Stein may lack the universal appeal that the Democratic and Republican candidates strive for…
[endquote]
No, what she lacks is the mass-media promotion, and big-money corportate backing. Let’s not confuse that with “universal appeal”.
Universal appeal? Even the Democrat voters admit that the Democrat’s only “appeal” consists of not being quite as odious as the Republican.
The plaforms, policy proposals of the Greens, what they offer, is much closer to what people say that they want, than are the policies of the Democrats.
So don’t make pessimistic assumptions about who has appeal.