3mo ago

‘Useful Idiot for Russia’: DNC Decides to Go Off on Jill Stein

www.thebulwark.com ‘Useful Idiot for Russia’: DNC Decides to Go Off on Jill Stein

The committee has largely kept quiet about the Green party nominee. But that’s now changing.

“Jill Stein is a useful idiot for Russia. After parroting Kremlin talking points and being propped up by bad actors in 2016 she’s at it again,” DNC spokesman Matt Corridoni said in a statement to The Bulwark. “Jill Stein won’t become president, but her spoiler candidacy—that both the GOP and Putin have previously shown interest in—can help decide who wins. A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump.”

You're viewing a single thread.

418 comments

I doubt anyone dumb enough to vote for Stein are Harris voters anyway. So now than likely a vote for Stein will be one taken for Trump. So Trump and Putin can waste all the money they want on her campaign.
- They're probably trying to scoop up the Republican voters that are disillusioned with Trump and prevent them from going to Harris. It's actually a decent strategy in that light.
  
  You know, positioning the DNC "against" her might draw some of the people who won't vote for Harris but really don't want to vote for Trump away from voting GOP....
- You don't have to be "smart" to vote for a good candidate.
  Stein is the nominally "more liberal than the Democrats are willing to be" candidate. So most likely if they were forced to vote and could only vote for Trump or Harris, then I'd wager they'd mostly go Harris.
  A relative weakness is that on the left there are currently more people ready to discard strategic thinking and stand on what they consider their absolute principles. The right is currently a bit more unified, as they are more willing to yield on their differences to vote closest to their overall goal with a decent chance to win.
  Or the left is fairly unified in practice but Internet manipulations present the illusion otherwise, I have no idea
  
  Or you could just reserve your opinion for who you are going to vote for, and respect the fact everyone is free to come to their own conclusion.
  I'm voting for Harris, but it wouldnt offend me If someone said they were voting third party. The same as I wouldnt expect it to offend them I'm voting for Harris.
  Y'all need to get off this good and evil Netflix drama.
  
  What they ultimately do with their vote is their business, but I'm just responding to the premise that would-be Stein voters would not vote for Harris anyway, because they are "too dumb" to vote for Harris, which is incorrect.
  As to discussing the strategic situation, I think that is important to reiterate the consequence of their vote. Stein will not win, it's very obvious, so a vote thrown that way is merely a message to try to break the self fulfilling prophecy of third parties being hopeless. If you truly feel either candidate is roughly equal, this is a fine and strategic move. I could understand that perspective in most presidential races I have seen. Given the happenings associated with Trump's first term, I personally can not understand that perspective, but ultimately it is their business.
  To be quiet on this would be to let what seems to be forces looking to weaken the Harris prospect prevail in swaying people to vote for Stein, despite those forces not actually wanting Stein, but just wanting a spoiler candidate to take some votes the way they want.
  
  First of all, blown way out of proportion. People voting for the green party are a very small number. What the democrat party doesnt want is any valid criticism of their party. That is detrimental because it could cause people to pull away from the democrats.
  So instead of just acknowledging any good points the green party has, or at least arguing them in good faith, they throw mud on the party calling them a Russian controlled political party, which is hypocritical at best when AIPAC runs the democratic party.
  Personally, I think the democrats would be better off acting in good faith rather than avoiding the topic and slandering the speakers.
  
  If out of proportion in scale, back in 2000, Nader voters going for Gore would have decided the nation for everyone. Ultimately the choices of a few hundred people overcame over half a million votes going the other way. The very small number of Stein voters in a certain place can decide the output. I don't fault them for 2000, even if I disagree with them, because I don't think folks could have reasonably foreseen the warmongering that was to come.
  If out of proportion in severity, between November 2020 and January 2021, you had several attempts to undermine the election, and that was with very little planning/prep work. You had trying to get the states to "find enough votes", you had fake electors, trying to get the VP to unilaterally refuse the election, inciting a crowd to storm the proceedings. In the aftermath you have certain people planning their whole political careers on promising to guarantee the elections for GOP, speculation that Vance was picked carefully as someone willing to do what Pence wouldn't, and a whole carefully constructed plan to start getting things ready for 2028 election the moment 2025 starts, if they can. You have a supreme court that ruled that a president may be considered immune for crimes, unless of course the supreme court decides it's not an "official act", reserving the ability to selectively enforce law on the president themselves.
  With respect to Russian influence, this is specifically a Stein situation and plenty of evidence to support that Stein is being supported by and manipulated by Russia. It makes sense too, as Trump has shown himself to be awfully susceptible to Putin's manipulation, so taking advantage of a naive Stein to foil the votes of naive voters in favor of Trump is a plain strategic path for them.
  Yes, we can talk about her platform, particularly about her wish to dissolve NATO and stop support of Ukraine, but other parts of her platform are difficult to explain the nuance of the problems. Like "dump money on third world nations", which sounds the decent thing to do, but historically trashes any semblance of local economy and frequently reinforces warlords instead of the people.
  
  If your logic is that the green party is big enough to cover the difference between candidates votes, then I have bad news for you because so is my neighborhood, and yours, and the group of people at your local church, and the next one over, and so on. Thats the reason why I say its impact is overblown. If the democrats lose by a hundred thousand votes, its not the green parties fault even if they get a million votes.
  The democrats need to appeal to voters, not throw shit. Apparently the democrat base right now likes when the campaign dives into the mud though, saying things like "its refreshing to hear" despite that being the exact same reason people were drawn to trump.

418 comments