The Election Looks So Close That Even You-Know-Who Could Tip It
David Faris
Tue, October 29, 2024
This is part of Wedge Issues, a pop-up advice column about politics, running now through the election. Submit a question here—it’s anonymous!
Dear Wedge Issues,
Should I fear Jill Stein—or, really, any third-party candidate? I recently read a piece about how Stein could have contributed to edging Hillary Clinton out in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in 2016. I also saw, according to a poll from the Council on American-Islamic Relations last month, that 40 percent of Muslims in Michigan are backing Stein too, because of her position on Israel’s war in Gaza. But I also saw that David Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK, has endorsed her? Lot of confusing stuff here. I just want to know whether to be afraid of what she could do to the election!
—Still, Jill?!
Dear Still?!,
The Green Party is not a particularly serious political operation. Its candidates have never won a federal election, and its vanishingly small number of successful candidates have been mostly at the municipal or state legislative level. Winner-take-all races for nearly all seats in Congress and for most states’ electors in the Electoral College mean that small parties usually get completely shut out of power. But on top of that, as an organization the Green Party does virtually nothing to build its brand and reach between elections and emerges from a cocoon of delusion and extremism every four years to terrify liberals. It makes sense that you’re freaked out—the Green Party is a zombie that has, once again, emerged from a dark resting place.
This year in particular, the Stein campaign is taking great pleasure in serving as a spoiler. Whereas the party’s 2004 nominee, David Cobb, explicitly refused to campaign in swing states after Ralph Nader was widely (and correctly) believed to have cost Al Gore the 2000 election, the Stein campaign seems to be concentrating all of its energy in a bid to deny Democratic nominee Kamala Harris the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The New York Times reported that a speaker at a recent Stein event in Michigan admitted the obvious: “We are not in a position to win the White House.” He added, “We do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan.” OK then!
And Jill Stein, specifically, is not a serious person. The former physician is launching her sixth “campaign” for a significant position in government, having run for governor of Massachusetts twice and now the presidency three times. Her best performance was actually the 17.7 percent of the vote she received 18 years ago in the race for Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth, in a contest that featured no Republican candidate. She has worked openly this year with Republicans trying to get her on state ballots for the express purpose of rat-fucking the election and will almost certainly receive a boost from Russian disinformation artists, as she did in 2016. While Stein has disavowed her endorsement by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, it is not a surprise that her increasingly fringe politics are attracting unwelcome bedfellows.
Stein is unlikely to draw north of 1 percent of the vote nationally—but unfortunately, she is a threat that we still have to take seriously. That’s because the 2024 election looks as if it is going to be agonizingly, almost impossibly close. The leading forecasts are close to 50–50, and it is difficult to imagine polling getting any narrower than it already is in the seven decisive battleground states. It is actually reasonable and understandable to do a little bit of doom spiraling about all the different things that could go wrong and lead to the future-warping catastrophe of a second Trump term. And Stein is, sadly, one of them.
But: This isn’t a situation where we can use simple arithmetic to get angry at Stein. To properly assign blame to Stein, and to figure out what she might wreak this time, we have to correctly assess what Stein’s voters would do if she were not on the ballot.
There’s a perception on the left that Stein cost Hillary Clinton the presidency in 2016. She did not, but it is understandable why this myth has taken hold. The way that people conclude this is to take Trump’s margins in a given state and tally up Stein’s votes there. If Stein’s raw vote totals exceeded Trump’s margin, then voilà: She must have denied Hillary Clinton victory in that state and thus the presidency. But this is a misreading of how third-party voting works, one that political scientists like me have repeatedly pushed back on. For example, the myth that Reform Party candidate Ross Perot cost Republican George H.W. Bush the election in 1992 is not sustainable when examined closely. Perot pulled more than 18 percent of the vote in an election that Democrat Bill Clinton won by fewer than 6 points, but you can’t just take the Texas billionaire’s haul and give it to Bush. Exit polls showed that Clinton and Bush were equally likely to be the second choice of Perot voters. And the most recent analysis, from Harrison Lavelle and Armin Thomas at Split Ticket, argues counterintuitively that Perot drew more votes from Clinton.
And, perhaps most importantly, there’s the fact that many third-party voters wouldn’t show up on Election Day at all if their preferred candidate is not on the ballot.
Political scientists Christopher Devine and Kyle Kotko published a paper in 2021 looking at the 2016 election and concluded that roughly 53 percent of Stein voters simply wouldn’t have turned out if she hadn’t been on the ballot. About 35 percent of Stein’s votes would have gone to Clinton, according to the study, and 8 percent to Trump. So, yes, she may have “contributed” to his margins in some states. But the one state where Stein’s candidacy may actually have been decisive in 2016 was Michigan, which Trump carried by fewer than 11,000 votes out of more than 5 million cast, and where Stein nabbed 51,463 votes. And while I’m sure it would have been a terrible, possibly unbearable blow to Trump’s crystalline ego to have won 290 electoral votes rather than 306, that one state wouldn’t have gotten Clinton anywhere near victory.
However, in 2024 Michigan could actually decide the whole election single-handedly. Forecaster Nate Silver gives Michigan his second-highest odds of being the “tipping-point state” in the election: the one that puts the winning candidate over 270 electoral votes. The Harris campaign is privately quite worried about it. If we assume similar turnout to 2020—about 5.5 million votes—and if we believe Stein’s RealClearPolitics average of 1.0 percent in multicandidate polling of the state, she is likely to draw around 55,000 votes in Michigan. But if we also assume that Stein’s actual Election Day totals will be about half of her election eve polling, which is what we saw across the board for third-party candidates including Stein in 2016 and which has been a consistent pattern in American elections, that number gets cut to 27,000.
So here’s what we can do with all this: We can apply Devine and Kotko’s conclusions and the standard Election Day dropoff for third-party candidates and assume that Stein wins 0.5 percent in Michigan, that 53 percent of her voters would have stayed home, that 35 percent would have gone to Harris, and 8 percent to Trump. If so, then Harris would have netted just over 3,000 more votes without Stein on the ballot.
Could Michigan be that close? It certainly could. But even in an era of sharp polarization during which the share of the electorate that changes sides between elections has plummeted, only a handful of states have been decided by fewer than 3,000 votes. This century, only New Hampshire (in 2016) and Florida and New Mexico (in 2000) were that close. Bumping the margin up to 5,000 votes or fewer does not add many states to the list.
The best thing to do here, though, is not to stew in your fear of Jill Stein but to reach out to friends and family members who are considering voting for her and try to gently talk them out of it, rather than calling them names on social media or accusing them of naively helping Donald Trump. Vote shaming not only doesn’t work but almost certainly causes people to dig in their heels. And that could, ironically, make everyone’s worst recurring Jill Stein nightmare a reality.
In US swing state Wisconsin, potential Green vote irks Democrats
Tue, October 29, 2024
This is part of Wedge Issues, a pop-up advice column about politics, running now through the election. Submit a question here—it’s anonymous!
Dear Wedge Issues,
Should I fear Jill Stein—or, really, any third-party candidate? I recently read a piece about how Stein could have contributed to edging Hillary Clinton out in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in 2016. I also saw, according to a poll from the Council on American-Islamic Relations last month, that 40 percent of Muslims in Michigan are backing Stein too, because of her position on Israel’s war in Gaza. But I also saw that David Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK, has endorsed her? Lot of confusing stuff here. I just want to know whether to be afraid of what she could do to the election!
—Still, Jill?!
Dear Still?!,
The Green Party is not a particularly serious political operation. Its candidates have never won a federal election, and its vanishingly small number of successful candidates have been mostly at the municipal or state legislative level. Winner-take-all races for nearly all seats in Congress and for most states’ electors in the Electoral College mean that small parties usually get completely shut out of power. But on top of that, as an organization the Green Party does virtually nothing to build its brand and reach between elections and emerges from a cocoon of delusion and extremism every four years to terrify liberals. It makes sense that you’re freaked out—the Green Party is a zombie that has, once again, emerged from a dark resting place.
This year in particular, the Stein campaign is taking great pleasure in serving as a spoiler. Whereas the party’s 2004 nominee, David Cobb, explicitly refused to campaign in swing states after Ralph Nader was widely (and correctly) believed to have cost Al Gore the 2000 election, the Stein campaign seems to be concentrating all of its energy in a bid to deny Democratic nominee Kamala Harris the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. The New York Times reported that a speaker at a recent Stein event in Michigan admitted the obvious: “We are not in a position to win the White House.” He added, “We do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan.” OK then!
And Jill Stein, specifically, is not a serious person. The former physician is launching her sixth “campaign” for a significant position in government, having run for governor of Massachusetts twice and now the presidency three times. Her best performance was actually the 17.7 percent of the vote she received 18 years ago in the race for Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth, in a contest that featured no Republican candidate. She has worked openly this year with Republicans trying to get her on state ballots for the express purpose of rat-fucking the election and will almost certainly receive a boost from Russian disinformation artists, as she did in 2016. While Stein has disavowed her endorsement by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, it is not a surprise that her increasingly fringe politics are attracting unwelcome bedfellows.
Stein is unlikely to draw north of 1 percent of the vote nationally—but unfortunately, she is a threat that we still have to take seriously. That’s because the 2024 election looks as if it is going to be agonizingly, almost impossibly close. The leading forecasts are close to 50–50, and it is difficult to imagine polling getting any narrower than it already is in the seven decisive battleground states. It is actually reasonable and understandable to do a little bit of doom spiraling about all the different things that could go wrong and lead to the future-warping catastrophe of a second Trump term. And Stein is, sadly, one of them.
But: This isn’t a situation where we can use simple arithmetic to get angry at Stein. To properly assign blame to Stein, and to figure out what she might wreak this time, we have to correctly assess what Stein’s voters would do if she were not on the ballot.
There’s a perception on the left that Stein cost Hillary Clinton the presidency in 2016. She did not, but it is understandable why this myth has taken hold. The way that people conclude this is to take Trump’s margins in a given state and tally up Stein’s votes there. If Stein’s raw vote totals exceeded Trump’s margin, then voilà: She must have denied Hillary Clinton victory in that state and thus the presidency. But this is a misreading of how third-party voting works, one that political scientists like me have repeatedly pushed back on. For example, the myth that Reform Party candidate Ross Perot cost Republican George H.W. Bush the election in 1992 is not sustainable when examined closely. Perot pulled more than 18 percent of the vote in an election that Democrat Bill Clinton won by fewer than 6 points, but you can’t just take the Texas billionaire’s haul and give it to Bush. Exit polls showed that Clinton and Bush were equally likely to be the second choice of Perot voters. And the most recent analysis, from Harrison Lavelle and Armin Thomas at Split Ticket, argues counterintuitively that Perot drew more votes from Clinton.
And, perhaps most importantly, there’s the fact that many third-party voters wouldn’t show up on Election Day at all if their preferred candidate is not on the ballot.
Political scientists Christopher Devine and Kyle Kotko published a paper in 2021 looking at the 2016 election and concluded that roughly 53 percent of Stein voters simply wouldn’t have turned out if she hadn’t been on the ballot. About 35 percent of Stein’s votes would have gone to Clinton, according to the study, and 8 percent to Trump. So, yes, she may have “contributed” to his margins in some states. But the one state where Stein’s candidacy may actually have been decisive in 2016 was Michigan, which Trump carried by fewer than 11,000 votes out of more than 5 million cast, and where Stein nabbed 51,463 votes. And while I’m sure it would have been a terrible, possibly unbearable blow to Trump’s crystalline ego to have won 290 electoral votes rather than 306, that one state wouldn’t have gotten Clinton anywhere near victory.
However, in 2024 Michigan could actually decide the whole election single-handedly. Forecaster Nate Silver gives Michigan his second-highest odds of being the “tipping-point state” in the election: the one that puts the winning candidate over 270 electoral votes. The Harris campaign is privately quite worried about it. If we assume similar turnout to 2020—about 5.5 million votes—and if we believe Stein’s RealClearPolitics average of 1.0 percent in multicandidate polling of the state, she is likely to draw around 55,000 votes in Michigan. But if we also assume that Stein’s actual Election Day totals will be about half of her election eve polling, which is what we saw across the board for third-party candidates including Stein in 2016 and which has been a consistent pattern in American elections, that number gets cut to 27,000.
So here’s what we can do with all this: We can apply Devine and Kotko’s conclusions and the standard Election Day dropoff for third-party candidates and assume that Stein wins 0.5 percent in Michigan, that 53 percent of her voters would have stayed home, that 35 percent would have gone to Harris, and 8 percent to Trump. If so, then Harris would have netted just over 3,000 more votes without Stein on the ballot.
Could Michigan be that close? It certainly could. But even in an era of sharp polarization during which the share of the electorate that changes sides between elections has plummeted, only a handful of states have been decided by fewer than 3,000 votes. This century, only New Hampshire (in 2016) and Florida and New Mexico (in 2000) were that close. Bumping the margin up to 5,000 votes or fewer does not add many states to the list.
The best thing to do here, though, is not to stew in your fear of Jill Stein but to reach out to friends and family members who are considering voting for her and try to gently talk them out of it, rather than calling them names on social media or accusing them of naively helping Donald Trump. Vote shaming not only doesn’t work but almost certainly causes people to dig in their heels. And that could, ironically, make everyone’s worst recurring Jill Stein nightmare a reality.
In US swing state Wisconsin, potential Green vote irks Democrats
Maggy DONALDSON
Tue, October 29, 2024 at 7:26 PM MDT
4 min read
Chester Todd walks past campaign signs outside his home in Racine, Wisconsin, where he's running for the House of Representatives in the state's first district (TANNEN MAURY)TANNEN MAURY/AFP/AFPMore
Chester Todd is an 82-year-old running for US Congress on a platform of "equality, reparations, liberation" -- and those principles, he says, are why neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump have earned his vote.
Wearing a Palestinian flag-colored scarf at a coffee shop in his hometown Racine, Wisconsin, Todd told AFP he will instead vote Jill Stein, the perennial Green Party candidate who is on the ballot in nearly every battleground state this presidential cycle -- and who many Democrats fear could stymie their White House chances.
Stein has virtually no chance of winning in Wisconsin -- or anywhere -- but in the key swing state where outcomes are notoriously a photo finish, her ballot line could have outsized influence.
Republicans won Wisconsin for the first time in nearly three decades in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost by just under 23,000 votes to Donald Trump -- a shock defeat that had some Democrats blaming Stein for taking around 31,000 votes.
And the Green Party's message -- which centers on issues like climate change, healthcare, and, this year, ending arms support to Israel in its war on Gaza -- continues to find traction in Wisconsin's bluest pockets, areas crucial to a Harris win.
National Democrats recently ran a campaign ad attacking Stein that aired in Wisconsin as well as Michigan and Pennsylvania -- all part of the so-called "Blue Wall" critical to the Democrats' White House path.
"She's not sorry she helped Trump win" in 2016, the ad states. "That's why a vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump."
Pete Karas, Wisconsin's Green Party elections chair, said that "spoiler argument" simply "doesn't hold water."
"It is an excuse the Democratic Party uses when they run crappy candidates and crappy elections and they lose."
Democratic Party strategy has included legal action to remove Stein from ballots nationwide, efforts that have mostly failed.
Karas said that picking such legal fights has done little more than further aggravate Green Party operatives like himself: "We will not be pushed out of the democratic process by the Democratic Party."
- 'Not satisfied' -
Charles Franklin, who directs the nationally recognized Marquette Law School Poll, told AFP while Stein likely does pull more from Democrats than Republicans, the idea that all Stein votes "would uniformly go to Harris" is "false."
"Any third party voter by definition has already passed the option of voting for one of the major party candidates," Franklin said. "They're voting for Stein because they're not satisfied."
A smattering of Green Party-endorsed candidates have won local office over the past decade in Wisconsin, but its presence there remains tiny.
Still, "it would be silly not to think it's a threat" in 2024, said Alexia Sabor, chair of the Dane County Democrats in the state's bluest county.
She sees the Green Party figuring into national elections as more "a desire to be disruptive" than an effort towards building a successful political party -- and says even for voters who tend Green, there's a clear choice on the ballot.
"You can not love the Democratic Party and you can not love Kamala Harris," she said, but "in terms of the values, it's pretty clear that the Republican Party doesn't align with their values -- and a lot of their values do align with Democrats."
Xavier Golden, a 23-year-old student at a public university near Milwaukee who has his own future political aspirations, says he voted for Bernie Sanders in 2020, the self-identified socialist senator who caucuses with Democrats and has run for president twice.
Speaking to AFP at the Racine Public Library where he works, Golden said this time, he's for Stein.
"If the Democrats wanted to control the main spirit of the liberal front, they would do that," Golden said, pointing to what he calls their "conservative stance on Palestine" and a tendency "to be so ticky-tacky with racial issues."
Like Green Party House of Representatives candidate Todd, Golden is a Black man. And like Todd, he says the Democrats ask for support from Black voters every four years but rarely deliver on what he dubbed "empty promises."
Both men advocate ending US arms support to Israel and call for economic reparations for descendants of enslaved people. They also point to issues like universal health care and the shortage of social and economic resources in predominantly minority neighborhoods as key influences shaping their politics.
If Democrats "were to commit to actually being the social justice party that they're painted as," Golden said, "I think they would be able to sway more voters -- and there wouldn't be no need for a Green Party."
4 min read
Chester Todd walks past campaign signs outside his home in Racine, Wisconsin, where he's running for the House of Representatives in the state's first district (TANNEN MAURY)TANNEN MAURY/AFP/AFPMore
Chester Todd is an 82-year-old running for US Congress on a platform of "equality, reparations, liberation" -- and those principles, he says, are why neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump have earned his vote.
Wearing a Palestinian flag-colored scarf at a coffee shop in his hometown Racine, Wisconsin, Todd told AFP he will instead vote Jill Stein, the perennial Green Party candidate who is on the ballot in nearly every battleground state this presidential cycle -- and who many Democrats fear could stymie their White House chances.
Stein has virtually no chance of winning in Wisconsin -- or anywhere -- but in the key swing state where outcomes are notoriously a photo finish, her ballot line could have outsized influence.
Republicans won Wisconsin for the first time in nearly three decades in 2016, when Hillary Clinton lost by just under 23,000 votes to Donald Trump -- a shock defeat that had some Democrats blaming Stein for taking around 31,000 votes.
And the Green Party's message -- which centers on issues like climate change, healthcare, and, this year, ending arms support to Israel in its war on Gaza -- continues to find traction in Wisconsin's bluest pockets, areas crucial to a Harris win.
National Democrats recently ran a campaign ad attacking Stein that aired in Wisconsin as well as Michigan and Pennsylvania -- all part of the so-called "Blue Wall" critical to the Democrats' White House path.
"She's not sorry she helped Trump win" in 2016, the ad states. "That's why a vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump."
Pete Karas, Wisconsin's Green Party elections chair, said that "spoiler argument" simply "doesn't hold water."
"It is an excuse the Democratic Party uses when they run crappy candidates and crappy elections and they lose."
Democratic Party strategy has included legal action to remove Stein from ballots nationwide, efforts that have mostly failed.
Karas said that picking such legal fights has done little more than further aggravate Green Party operatives like himself: "We will not be pushed out of the democratic process by the Democratic Party."
- 'Not satisfied' -
Charles Franklin, who directs the nationally recognized Marquette Law School Poll, told AFP while Stein likely does pull more from Democrats than Republicans, the idea that all Stein votes "would uniformly go to Harris" is "false."
"Any third party voter by definition has already passed the option of voting for one of the major party candidates," Franklin said. "They're voting for Stein because they're not satisfied."
A smattering of Green Party-endorsed candidates have won local office over the past decade in Wisconsin, but its presence there remains tiny.
Still, "it would be silly not to think it's a threat" in 2024, said Alexia Sabor, chair of the Dane County Democrats in the state's bluest county.
She sees the Green Party figuring into national elections as more "a desire to be disruptive" than an effort towards building a successful political party -- and says even for voters who tend Green, there's a clear choice on the ballot.
"You can not love the Democratic Party and you can not love Kamala Harris," she said, but "in terms of the values, it's pretty clear that the Republican Party doesn't align with their values -- and a lot of their values do align with Democrats."
Xavier Golden, a 23-year-old student at a public university near Milwaukee who has his own future political aspirations, says he voted for Bernie Sanders in 2020, the self-identified socialist senator who caucuses with Democrats and has run for president twice.
Speaking to AFP at the Racine Public Library where he works, Golden said this time, he's for Stein.
"If the Democrats wanted to control the main spirit of the liberal front, they would do that," Golden said, pointing to what he calls their "conservative stance on Palestine" and a tendency "to be so ticky-tacky with racial issues."
Like Green Party House of Representatives candidate Todd, Golden is a Black man. And like Todd, he says the Democrats ask for support from Black voters every four years but rarely deliver on what he dubbed "empty promises."
Both men advocate ending US arms support to Israel and call for economic reparations for descendants of enslaved people. They also point to issues like universal health care and the shortage of social and economic resources in predominantly minority neighborhoods as key influences shaping their politics.
If Democrats "were to commit to actually being the social justice party that they're painted as," Golden said, "I think they would be able to sway more voters -- and there wouldn't be no need for a Green Party."
Democrats go after Jill Stein, Cornel West in digital ads aimed at young voters
JONATHAN J. COOPER
Mon, October 28, 2024
FILE - Progressive activist Cornel West speaks at a demonstration in Union Park outside the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago.
Stein was the Green Party nominee in 2016 and won 132,000 votes across Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Democrat Hillary Clinton lost by a combined 77,000 votes in those states. This year, Stein has broadened the Green Party's traditional pro-environment base by fiercely denouncing Israel and its military strikes in Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere.
Critiques of Israel and support for Palestinians made up the bulk of her 45-minute appearance at a coffee shop in suburban Phoenix on Monday.
Stein urged dozens of supporters not to be intimidated by pressure to vote for the “lesser evil" between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris, alleging both are “ genocidal candidates” because of their support for Israel.
“If we are to be a democracy we have to stand up for what we want,” Stein said. “We have to vote for what we want.”
“There is absolutely nothing to gain by voting for either one of them and there's everything to lose,” she added. She called the Democratic campaign against her a threat to free speech.
Her campaign manager, Jason Call, was more blunt.
“We want them to lose,” Call said of the Democratic ticket. “Genocide deserves losing.” He added that “nobody wants Trump to win,” but argued the consequences of sending another Democrat to the White House “will be worse than Trump.”
JONATHAN J. COOPER
Mon, October 28, 2024
FILE - Progressive activist Cornel West speaks at a demonstration in Union Park outside the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago.
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
PHOENIX (AP) — Democrats are spending about $500,000 for a last-minute push to persuade voters in battleground states to reject third-party candidates Jill Stein and Cornel West, warning a vote for them will help Republican Donald Trump.
The Democratic National Committee said Monday that the digital ads will run on Instagram and YouTube, targeting younger voters and college campuses. They use video of Trump from a June rally in Philadelphia, when he said: “Cornel West. He’s one of my favorite candidates, Cornel West. And I like her also, Jill Stein, I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100% from them. He takes 100%.”
Stung by narrow losses in 2000 and 2016 that they blame in part on support for Green Party nominees, Democrats have put a major emphasis this year on discouraging left-leaning voters from backing third-party candidates. They pushed back aggressively against No Labels, a nascent third-party movement, and the independent candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before turning attention to Stein and West.
PHOENIX (AP) — Democrats are spending about $500,000 for a last-minute push to persuade voters in battleground states to reject third-party candidates Jill Stein and Cornel West, warning a vote for them will help Republican Donald Trump.
The Democratic National Committee said Monday that the digital ads will run on Instagram and YouTube, targeting younger voters and college campuses. They use video of Trump from a June rally in Philadelphia, when he said: “Cornel West. He’s one of my favorite candidates, Cornel West. And I like her also, Jill Stein, I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100% from them. He takes 100%.”
Stung by narrow losses in 2000 and 2016 that they blame in part on support for Green Party nominees, Democrats have put a major emphasis this year on discouraging left-leaning voters from backing third-party candidates. They pushed back aggressively against No Labels, a nascent third-party movement, and the independent candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before turning attention to Stein and West.
Stein was the Green Party nominee in 2016 and won 132,000 votes across Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Democrat Hillary Clinton lost by a combined 77,000 votes in those states. This year, Stein has broadened the Green Party's traditional pro-environment base by fiercely denouncing Israel and its military strikes in Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere.
Critiques of Israel and support for Palestinians made up the bulk of her 45-minute appearance at a coffee shop in suburban Phoenix on Monday.
Stein urged dozens of supporters not to be intimidated by pressure to vote for the “lesser evil" between Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris, alleging both are “ genocidal candidates” because of their support for Israel.
“If we are to be a democracy we have to stand up for what we want,” Stein said. “We have to vote for what we want.”
“There is absolutely nothing to gain by voting for either one of them and there's everything to lose,” she added. She called the Democratic campaign against her a threat to free speech.
Her campaign manager, Jason Call, was more blunt.
“We want them to lose,” Call said of the Democratic ticket. “Genocide deserves losing.” He added that “nobody wants Trump to win,” but argued the consequences of sending another Democrat to the White House “will be worse than Trump.”
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