The public is ready for a third-party candidacy
Never have the stars been so aligned for a third-party candidacy as they are now.
The public has literally never been so disgusted with our two-party choices.
In a development not seen in any modern presidential contest, more than half of all voters hold unfavorable views of the two major party candidates and large majorities say neither is honest and trustworthy. Only half of voters say Mrs. Clinton is prepared to be president, while an astonishing two-thirds say that Mr. Trump is not ready for the job — including four in 10 Republicans.
However, there is a gatekeeper for the two-party system - the news media. They are working hard to make sure that the Democrats and Republicans are the only voices that will be heard.
However, third-party candidates find themselves caught in a catch-22: polling and news companies — like Quinnipiac, USA Today, and CNN — see third parties as on the “fringe” with little clout, so many pollsters don’t include them in their surveys. Therefore, high poll numbers are hard to come by.
It’s a cyclical problem: Stein and Johnson are polling low because they lack name recognition. And the biggest boon of name recognition is impossible to reach without significant name recognition...
Many polls — like those cited by this New York Times article – only pit Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton against each other. Clinton has maintained a slight lead over Trump by about 5 percentage points. Another 5 percent refuse to respond.
However, when polls explicitly include options for “other” or “unknown,” support for an unnamed candidate besides Clinton or Trump skyrockets to as high as 37 percent.
“The game is rigged,” says Johnson, “There’s no way a third-party candidate can compete unless they’re on the debate stage, and you can’t get there unless you’re in the polls.”
When Johnson is included in the polls he actually leads Trump among 18-29 year-olds.
And yet it's not Trump that should be afraid of a third-party candidacy. It's Hillary that should be scared.
Given a little more information about the two alternative candidates, respondents who back Johnson and Stein draw more deeply from Clinton’s support.
Up until now, the politics of fear is still working with most of the public, but that is starting to break down.
“21 percent of likely voters will not back Trump or Clinton. That compares with about 13 percent of likely voters who opted out of the two main choices at the same point in the 2012 race between incumbent President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. The poll also showed a majority of American voters have an overall ‘unfavorable’ view of both main candidates, with 46 percent of Clinton supporters and 47 percent of Trump supporters saying their top priority when voting will be to stop the opposing candidate from reaching the White House.”
Thank Gawd for C99P, because you can't even talk about 3rd party candidates on the GOS. It's a bannable offense.
So like certain ideas and values, talk of things outside of the mainstream is off-limits. Which is, of course, one of the biggest problems with the country these days.
That's why the Dems worked so hard to create the Ralph Nader Myth.
Comments
Even though Bernie hasn't conceded,
he has been in a poll since May? RCP must be afraid of getting banned by Kos. I wonder how Bernie would poll.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump.
I am preparing myself to respond to this statement and I get the feeling I'm going to be responding to it A LOT!
"A vote for Stein is a vote for Stein. A vote for Trump is a vote for Trump. You seem to be under the delusion that if Stein (or any other 3rd party candidate) was not in the Presidential race that I would vote for Clinton. This I assure you is not true. I think both the Republican Xenophobe and Democratic war hawk frontrunners are both bad choices. I'm not wasting my very valuable and only Presidential vote on either of them."
The people, united, will never be defeated.
Brilliant response! I am gonna take that one
and with little modification use it myself.
Too many people are stuck in the trap of binary thinking, the fact that things can be other than black or white is just beyond them.
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
another version?
"A vote for Trump is a vote for Trump."
Trump makes me less sick to my stomach then Clintons.
Also, openly acknowledging the ease of voting for Trump, knocks the wind out of the FEAR Clintons are trying to instill. SO, whether it's true or not, ENJOYING telling everyone who asks, still wear my Bernie 2016 buttons, who I'm going to vote for now, I'm going to vote for Trump.
"But, but, but...You can't do that!" Oh, yes I can, it's easy!
Without - Be Afraid of Trump - WTF else does Clinton have?
They're both nauseating,
but it really is that easy!
This shit is bananas.
Math Problems
"A vote for Candidate X is a vote for Trump" is a claim by someone who is math challenged.
How about a vote for Stein is a vote for sanity
insanity being doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Love it!!!!
The people, united, will never be defeated.
Excellent response!
One of my favorites is, "But my Trump supporting friends tell me that a vote for Stein is a vote for Clinton. Which one is it?"
A vote for Clinton is a vote for Trump
Because it might keep Jill Stein from winning the election. See how that works? When the Hillbots point out how preposterous that is, then you can point out that they just shot their own argument full of holes.
I talked with a woman this afternoon who was a Bernie supporter, along with her husband, and she was expressing grief about the choices we had. I mentioned Jill Stein -- she'd never heard of her. Explained a little, and suggested she check her out. She seemed very excited! Maybe selling Jill Stein won't be so hard after all -- we could be pushing on an open door.
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I wonder if Hillbots
Could even wrap their minds around that statement
Shouldn't we be committing our efforts
to getting ranked-choice voting in effect in the states? If the energy spent on the Lesser Evil argument were applied to changing the plurality victor approach (which supports only the 2-party dictatorship) to a party-agnostic approach that eliminates the "throwing away your vote" problem, we'd probably already have ranked-choice voting.
Spot on
Now what to do with the obvious. Obvious to those of us paying attention anyway. I think it may be too late this cycle but maybe not. I'd say this is a fragile thing but four years of either Trump or HRC can only increase the dissatisfaction.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
Can you imagine in 2020
after an already unpopular candidate becomes president, and then we go into a long recession, plus pass TPP/TISA, plus 4 more years of losing wars.
Can you imagine just how angry the populace is going to be?
I'd say I'm way ahead of the populace
but I'm beyond anger. Angry people make mistakes and have faulty judgment. I have a plan. The stage is national politics at the highest level. I can barely see the stage let alone imagine being on it. I'm individually powerless to direct what happens on it. So. What to do? The only actions I can take are in concert with a well lead movement of like minded people. We have several scattered groups like Berners, Greens, and some of the Trump people to name the major ones. I'll even go so far as to say we may peel off some of Johnson's supporters. The people need to be united and organized under one banner and a leader. A coalition of leaders might work for a time. (That would certainly work if they are as selfless as Bernie and Jill have shown themselves to be.) Bernie may be that leader. He says he will reveal his ideas shortly. Jill Stein certainly is a leader with a following. I don't think she sees herself as the leader of a movement or she wouldn't have offered Bernie the top spot on the Green ticket. I have no doubt she would contribute significantly to a united progressive movement. She is probably indispensable to building such a movement but that it would be in a senior leadership role rather than the top spot. All of this has to gel before I can do much of anything productive. My plan is to follow whoever starts pulling the various groups together to build the one thing each of us individually lacks. Power. Bernie has the best start so for now I'll find where I can contribute and follow his lead as long as it goes in a viable direction.
There have been a few essays and comments floating around here the past few days that continue to say Bernie has other motives or has sold out. Many of us who initially felt this way have rethought our initial reactions to the "endorsement". Jill Stein's Greens have been the worthy beneficiary of that sentiment so far. I plan to support her with my vote and donations until, if, Bernie comes up with something I can get behind. He says it will come soon.
To those who want to swear off all leaders and organizations as unworthy I have one question. When has a leaderless, disorganized rabble ever effected meaningful change on any level beyond that of a small community? Don't bother looking because it hasn't happened and won't happen in the US. The latest example is OWS. It did some really good work but died from a lack of leadership, organization, and a unified message and plan. Those flaws made it unable to focus the power it found in it's supporters and the many who sympathized with their poorly defined overall purpose.
Remember the power is in "WE" but it has to be organized, directed, and focused to stand any chance at changing anything. The dark side is that people have to also be willing to personally sacrifice and never quit regardless of the personal losses.
The shorter answer to your question is that in a couple of years, probably less, millions more will say to themselves that that Bernie Sanders guy was right. HRC is corrupt, untrustworthy, and does not promote policies that will improve their lives. Or. Trump is a buffoon who shouldn't be allowed in civilized company much less be president. They'll want to know more about the few leaders of alternative political organizations like Bernie and Jill who say things they agree with. My less optimistic side says this is 'Murica where people can't see the obvious or filter out the BS for themselves.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
you almost had me
I was mostly agreeing with you until this: "The latest example is OWS. It did some really good work but died from a lack of leadership, organization, and a unified message and plan."
Occupy did not die because of those things at all. There was an abundance of shared leadership, innovative organization, and many very clear messages and plans. The large-scale Occupy movement was crushed by the brutal boot of the organized police state, which coordinated physical attacks on encampments, discredited, disparaged, and silenced the movement, infiltrated groups to sow dissension and create violence, dumped mentally ill people into the movement, and jailed people who resisted.
Meanwhile, small pockets of activists who still identify with the Occupy label are working locally in communities all over the country to better people's lives. See, for example, Occupy Sandy, which is still helping the victims of that storm. http://occupysandy.net/calendar/
Another strong example is debt relief through http://rollingjubilee.org/ They started as part of Occupy, and they're still doing excellent work.
Please stop perpetuating the lie that Occupy collapsed on its own. It discourages people who are trying to make things better.
There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
--Amiri Baraka
I did not say it collapsed on its own.
It was crushed just as you say. It remains to be said that it was so fragmented and leaderless that it had no resilience to weather the blows. It also failed to resonate with the population as a whole. Part of that is a failure to offer a coherent message from a united membership. Were there planted saboteurs that compromised their organization and helped decapitate the leadership? Hell yes. It's strength from " shared leadership, innovative organization" was also it's fatal flaw. That sort of organization is easy to disrupt with the sort of tactics used. I disagree with your claim of "many very clear messages and plans". Clear to who? You for sure and probably clear to those closely associated and/or deeply involved with OWS. Practically nobody else outside of those people could articulate what OWS stood for or their goals. That was largely a result of intentional media disinformation and willfully ignoring everything but the disruptions to regular order. That OWS was seeking to a redress of grievances was completely lost to most people. Again, it was all too easy to characterize OWS as fringe, anarchists, bad actors, and disaffected, lazy youth looking for a free ride. So, no, OWS did not collapse on its own. It collapsed from structural, leadership, and messaging methods that were extremely vulnerable to those who have the power and long practical knowledge of how to wreck an movement that would otherwise be completely acceptable to large parts of America.
OWS got owned by professional rat fuckers. Bernie or Jill Stein or whoever emerges to credibly threaten the power structure will face the exact same people using the same tactics and resources. I was not a party to OWS but only someone who strongly supported and approved of their goals and had no issue with their methods. I didn't need to be to see what was happening and the likely outcome. We instead need to learn from the OWS story and do our best to avoid the same flaws. Ignoring them or blaming everything else but those flaws will only lead to a repeat.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
PS they know what they can do with
their sixteen-year-old Ralph Nader Myth. Most folk aren't buying it this time, either. It's tired. And it's bullshit.
The Nader myth serves a vital purpose for them
The Democratic party as currently constructed only has a future as half of a two-party system. Bring out the possibility of third parties, and the Democratic party would have to change and actually earn votes from voters. "We Suck Less!" would no longer suffice.
Partisan Democrats know that voters realizing there are other choices would be the death of their party, and they're probably right. So they have to burn any witches who utter the heresy that we do have somewhere else to go. They convince nobody but themselves, but that's the whole point.
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The democratic party
Isn't built to withstand a third party challenge. Any third party challenge. Even libertarians would hurt them.
What the Status Quo Interests Most Fear
is that a critical mass of people will start voting for what they believe, instead of voting against what they fear. A necessary pre-condition to making the revolution Bernie has been talking about a reality.
inactive account
Exactly this^^^! The only way out of the lesser evil paradigm
is to vote out of hope for someone rather than out of fear against someone.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020
Gotta love the NYT shills
remarking that Democrats are more united than Repugnants... Pure swill.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
If that was true, US media wouldn't already be ginning up
Jill Stein hit jobs...
Agree with luncachickie
and, what makes me furious, is that same damn MSM is using the Ralph Nader myth to attack the Green Party. "She'll be another Ralph Nader" is what I hear a lot when I talk about Jill Stein as a powerful option for us now.
Infuriating - this need they seem to have to instill FEAR!
I'd normally agree, Caerus, but in this particular election
I think ANY exposure for the Greens and Stein is good exposure. I actually think if the MSM stoops to attacking her, it's only going to cause people to look into who she is, and realize they have other options. When more than half the country really doesn't want either candidate, they are desperate for any kind of escape, and would be more willing to investigate than in previous years. IMHO, anyway.
Really?
I hadn't heard that one lately, but I'm absolutely not surprised, they are so completely desperate in this cycle to latch on to anything they think might work to sway a population that gets deliberately scared as often as possible. Years from now, history (assuming anyone is around to still compile it) will dub this The Kitchen Sink Election.
Maybe the Dems should just rename themselves The Kitchen Sink Party? The Nader meme is particularly stupid to be repeating this year. It has always been senseless propaganda anyway, and it's also been roundly debunked from a voter-breakdown standpoint. So how much nerve do you have to have to trot it out again after sixteen years.
Sixteen years! I'm sorry, but those people are now officially insane...
To anybody pulling the Nader card on Stein
You might point out that if your only political appeal is based on fear, you're on the wrong side.
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With the advent of social media and the loss of patronage
the print media and tv outlets have suffered, polling is much more difficult. Factor in the fact that the for-profit press elbows out anyone but Republicans and Democrats, it's even harder to get accurate polls.
A sophisticated use of social media will allow 3rd & 4th party candidates to run campaigns with far less money. If you consider that the Greens will have a stronger get-out-the-vote effort than the Libertarians, then I think Green has a chance to carry several states at least.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Well except for the fact that they are who gets all the money.
Suffering all the way to the where they return it to its source. $3 - $5B is a lot of money to spread around.
By the way, Jill has a sub reddit.
www.reddit.com/r/jillstein
It's not as slick as K4S yet, but these things take time. They need some Berniecrats to act as mods for the sub.
The Greens also need people to coordinate the activities of volunteers all over the place. If you have any talent along this line, please contact your local Green Party.
I suspect that they'll need computer upgrades and other technical help in order to get up to speed to run a national campaign. If you have IT skills, please give them a call.
Thanks.
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
Or better yet, join your Green local
and tell them that if they want people to support them, they could do a few things to act like a real political party. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people here don't have Green locals and will have to form them themselves. You should be able to find out on the gp.org webpage.
"there's something so especially sadistic about waving the flag of a country that you're actively destroying" -- Aaron Mate
LOL!
Irony abounds:
She certainly does!
Democrats, we tried to warn you. How is that guilt and shame working out?
Which is PRECISELY what we have been complaining about
isn't it, RichM?
They sure are something, these establishment Dems.
Besides getting elected and re-elected.....
what in hell are the core values of today's Democratic Party that Hillary represents?
Private prisons? (Hillary and Bill both were for them until the Republicans turned against them as too costly.
Yapping about super predators?
Negotiating a Constitutional amendment on choice, which Hillary said during the 2016 primary she's prepared to do?
Coming out against equal marriage and not coming out for equal marriage until after a majority Republican-nominated Supreme Court ruled marriage discrimination unconstitutional?
Taking credit in campaign ads for Ted Kennedy's SCHIP bill without so much as mentioning Kennedy's name?
Bills outlawing flag desecration? Then Senator Hillary Clinton wrote two of those.
Making sure Medicare for All never becomes a reality?
Ending welfare as we know it and demeaning people who need it?
Chatting with Pete Peterson about the future of Social Security?
Not even trying to enact a new voting rights bill, as Democrats in Congress have not done since the SCOTUS said fact-finding on the Voting Rights Act of 1964 was too stale?
Taking two years to "sift through" evidence before responding to subpoenas and FOIA requests?
Falsely blaming Senator Sanders for a bill her husband rammed through Congress? (The Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000)
The Clinton Foundation?
Colluding with the DNC, which is supposed to be neutral in primaries?
PACS and dark money, while mouthing opposition to the Citizens United decision?
Dangling Hillary's Victory Fund in front of state parties?
Etc.
Let's not call our goal a "third party."
Let's call it realignment, such as what America had in 1852-1856.
"there's something so especially sadistic about waving the flag of a country that you're actively destroying" -- Aaron Mate
The stars may be aligned, but the candidates are not.
I will vote for Jill Stein in November, but she is not ready for a Presidential run. Neither is the Green Party.
What steps need to be taken by the Green Party
other than amass enough voter support? Money? Stein is better-spoken than most predecessors IMO.
I would be interested in hearing what you think it takes. I know we live here, c99p, in our own little bubble. Glycerol makes bubbles hold together.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Money is a big one
They are not going too far if they are relying on federal matching funds. Bernie explained the problems with that at one of the debates.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
I just made up a new hashtag (and I don't tweet)
#itsoverwitheither
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.