I listen to a few podcasts, mostly in my car. By the time I hear them, they’re usually about a week or two old – I download a raft of them and dump them on to my ancient iPod. One of the ones I listen to is Jeremy Scahill’s Intercepted, and it took me this long to hear his June 7 interview with Jill Stein, former Green Party candidate for president. This was billed under the headline “The Woman Democrats Love to Hate”. I have a lot of respect for Scahill, but I think this interview demonstrates another type of delusion; namely, Stein’s over-inflated sense of her own importance.

I have no doubt some Democrats blame her for Clinton’s loss last year, but I doubt it’s all that many – most of the Hillary-bots focus on Bernie Sanders when they look left. At least I hope Democrats don’t spend a lot of energy hating Stein, because she really wasn’t much of a factor at all. If Hillary Clinton was depending on Stein voters to carry her over the finish line – and there’s little likelihood many of them would ever have decided to support Clinton – then her margin was way, way too narrow for any Democrat to win the presidency. Most of the centrist whining I hear is about the Bernie wing of the party, that they were too critical of Clinton and didn’t work hard enough for her election or just withheld their votes. Nothing much about Stein at all, though they clearly don’t like her.

I agree with Stein on a lot of issues. In fact, I think I’m well to the left of the good Doctor. But the notion that the electoral duopoly can be taken down by supporting quixotic third-party presidential candidates is ludicrous, as is the suggestion that changing the way elections work in the United States is somehow “easy”, as she suggests in this interview. The Green Party is a mess; they have yet to elect a congress member, senator, governor, or even lieutenant governor as far as I can tell. If they want to start contending in national elections, they need to start filling those seats first. They also need to organize around electoral reform, support instant runoff / ranked choice voting, and related proposals. Until that happens, Green Party candidates will split the center-left vote and throw our ridiculous first-past-the-post, winner-take-all elections to the Republicans, time and time again. Those changes would be years in the making – they should have focused their energies on that for the last 20 years instead of random, pointless runs for the White House.

And Jeremy, I love you, but no, there’s not constitutional provision instituting a two-party monopoly. There is, however, a constitutional electoral system that is antiquated and greatly favors the wealthy. We need to change that before any we can expect any meaningful opening for third parties.

Of course, there is a faster course to progressive change than spending decades building a new third party while simultaneously countering the tide of restrictive voting: occupy the Democratic party. Take over its local, state, and national committees. Transform it from within and push it from without through massive organizing. There’s no law that says the Democratic party must remain within the grip of corporate money; we can change that dynamic much faster than we can build a new party (and a congenial political environment for the same) from the ground up. Instead of re-fighting old battles, we should do that.

luv u,

jp