Voting for Jill Stein; Revisited

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"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)

"A Vote for 'ABBH' (Any Body But Harris) is a Vote for Trump and Republo-Fascism" (S. Jonas, August, 2024)

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I published a column on "The Jill Stein Vote" just a few months ago. Except on the "Israel Disaster" I usually don't return to deal with a topic so soon. But "The Jill Stein Vote" is becoming an ever-more serious problem for the future of Constitutional Democracy in the United Sates, especially in the light of whom she has chosen as her Vice-Presidential candidate (a subject that I will be commenting on further, below. Please note that in this column, I am using some of the text from the earlier one. )

"Voting for Jill Stein" has once again become a topic of conversation among various elements of the "Left" in the United Sates. Some leftists, including myself, think that in the upcoming election voting for a "left" third party candidate is not a good idea --- that it is, in the "swing states," actually a horrible idea. It is now well-known that one of the two major party candidates has in the past made it very clear that if elected he will rip up the bourgeois-democratic Constitution adopted in 1789 and amended 27 times since and replace it with an off-a-very-long-off-the-cuff fascist version of designed by colleagues and former members of his staff (that of course is Project2025). Once back in power they would do this without the benefit either of the amendment process as laid out in the current Constitution or a Constitutional Convention (the requirements for which are also described in the current document).

As is well-known, publicly Trump is now trying to run away from P2025 as fast as his bone-spurred heels can carry him. And of course, to accept that supposed retreat we would have to believe that he would leave behind a plan developed by many former members of his staff, and one that has many key elements that he has widely and loudly promoted before, like overturning the Civil Service Act of 1883-as-amended, just like that. Of course we have to believe him, because he is such a famous truth-teller. Trump's own version of P2025, provided for us at length, in the vernacular rather than in a semi-formal, almost academic document (Trump, a man of very limited education/reading, couldn't do "academic" even if he wanted to), is openly revealed in a lengthy recent interview with TIME Magazine.

So why is the "Jill Stein vote" such an issue this time around? Because (to repeat the well-known argument), in certain swing states she might just draw away enough votes that would otherwise go to Harris-Walz, thus giving the election to Trump. Again, as is well-known (but in my mind worth repeating), in Florida in the 2000 election Ralph Nader got about 90,000 votes. With a margin of 535 votes in Florida, and a HUGE boost from a Republican-dominated Supreme Court, G.W. Bush won Florida's electoral vote and thus won the Presidency. Our nation then went on to "9/11," the expansion of the "Afghanistan War," and "Iraq." In the past, Nader and his defenders/acolytes have not placed any responsibility for the Bush victory and any of the subsequent events at his feet. Last year, I saw that Mr. Nader, fearing Trump fascism, was urging people to vote for Biden. However, I cannot find any recent statements to that effect. For those who want to prevent the advent of TrumpRepubloFascism, let's hope that between now and election day, she does come out with one or more statements urging a vote for Harris.

Jill Stein ran on the Green Party ticket in both 2012 and 2016. In the five "swing states" that gave Trump his 2016 victory, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, his total winning margin was about 75,000 votes. That happened to be just about the same number of votes that Dr. Stein got in those states. What does that show? Absolutely nothing definitive. But hey. IF they had gone to Clinton instead, they MIGHT have delivered the election to her. We will never know for sure, of course. Which brings us down to 2024.

This time around, Dr. Stein has once again secured the Green Party nomination. As it happens, I like Jill Stein. How could I not? We graduated from the same medical school, about 17 years apart. (I'm the older one. Just a note on the "candidates'-age-issue," Dr. Stein, at age 73, is now the second oldest candidate in this election.) But as my readers already know, as summarized above, along with many other observers I think that, were Trump to be elected once again, along with the Party that he has totally taken over (with the full cooperation of most of its leading lights in and financial supporters) from the perspective of maintaining some form of bourgeois Constitutional democracy the country would be headed for disaster. As it happens, this picture of TrumpRepubloFascism represents reality for most observers. Nevertheless, Dr. Stein is persisting in running again.

(In terms of RFK Jr., the latest news as of this writing [8-22-24] is that he is planning to endorse Trump. There is an interesting historical connection between Jr.'s father and Trump: both were proteges of Roy Cohn. However, politically RFK left Cohn way behind, whereas Trump has been quoted on more than one occasion as saying: "Where's my Roy Cohn?" Interestingly enough, it is being said in return for his endorsement that Jr. has asked Trump, should he win, for a guarantee of appointment as Sec. of HHS. Now, we know just how good Trump is at keeping promises, BUT If Trump wins and does makes RFK his Sec. HHS [which seems to be the deal no matter what the Trump people would be saying about it now], and RFK were able to exert full control of the infectious disease functions of the Department [from which most of the career civil servants would have be fired], being the Anti-Vaxxer [not just for COVID-19] that he is, death rates from all the infectious diseases susceptible to vaccination would rise exponentially.)

But getting back to Jill Stein. One major policy that draws strong support for her is her position on Israel and the Gaza Crisis. My position on that horror is clear. I have been a strong critic, in writing, of what I now call The Israeli Nationalists, for many years. I just don't see how doing anything that would further Trump's chances of winning would bring about any solution to the Crisis that would benefit the people of Gaza. After all, Trump has said words to the effect of that he "would let Netanyahu finish the job" (whatever that means --- one can just imagine). But that possibility doesn't seem to have affected Dr. Stein's thinking on the matter. In fact, she has just chosen as her Vice-Presidential Candidate a Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Rudolph 'Butch' Ware . He holds to a very strong position against the policies of the Israeli government (as, to repeat, do I). And so, in those states in which the now "Stein-Ware" ticket is running which are swing states, especially those of that group which have significant Arab-American populations very strongly opposed to the policies of the Biden-Harris Administration, with the subtraction of the votes which, given Trump's well-known and long-standing Muslim/Islamo-phobia, might otherwise go to Harris-Walz, they certainly could swing the election to Trump.

To summarize then, at the center of my concern about the Stein candidacy (and at the center of concern of many others, especially in the leadership of the Democratic Party, as well as other anti-fascists who are not connected with the Democratic Party) is that this time around, especially with her new running-mate, in one or more swing states she might well pull the election to Trump, just as she may (or may not) have done the last time. As to just what is the thinking of this very intelligent woman who graduated from the Harvard Medical School, I have to say that it is completely beyond me.