Why Jill Stein?

In some despair about the general run of the presidential campaign, I happened to visit the website of Green Party candidate (and old acquaintance) Jill Stein, where I found her platform (here). It was a very different experience from any other in this campaign season so far. Even Bernie Sanders's heartfelt exhortations didn't come close. What I found was (as I wrote on the site) "a rather precise description of the world I would like to live in, and would like my children and their children to inherit." It begins with a whole and comprehensive response to the climate problem and various climate justice solutions, but it doesn't stop there. It considers equity issues in the workplace, and calls for redistribution of wealth and resources at many levels in our society. Though thin on foreign policy, it envisions a major reduction in military expenditures, closures of bases, and a turn to diplomacy in place of warfare. It follows the old injunction to first see the change you want to bring about, and I feel deeply drawn to the vision laid out in this platform document.

Of course this poses a problem. As everyone knows, voting Green will help make Donald Trump our president. As a 2000 Nader voter, I heard this a lot, though I drew several different lessons: first, my Massachusetts electors were instructed to vote for Gore, and did, so my vote added nothing to Bush's (stolen) election. Secondly, the 5% of us in MA who voted Green helped put that party on the ballot, where Stein and others have added considerable wisdom to the public debate in numerous campaigns since then. And third, I was able to feel I had voted for an honorable candidate, rather than that shill Al Gore. Mutatis mutandis, I think these lessons apply pretty directly to the present case.

In particular, as we are still in the public debate stage, I would love to see Stein's platform become part of that discussion. Her ideas are both solid and creative, and deserve a whole lot more attention than they get. (I hope to add a more substantive critique soon.) Speaking of public debate, the Green and Libertarian candidates should all be included in the major televised debates. Why not? They broaden the terms of discussion, represent serious parties and doctrines, and offer real choice in an election where more than half of the voters say they really don't like either of the bigger party candidates. Stein's website contains a petition to include the Greens in the national debates. Go there and sign it. Now.

Of course as we approach November my 2000 experience will cause me to reevaluate. A Florida Nader supporter would have been well advised to make a strategic compromise in the voting booth, and I suppose the same thing could happen in various swing states this year. Then as now, I would have to say, if MA turns out to be a swing state, then there would really be no hope for a Democratic Party victory nationally. But I would take that calculation seriously.

Meanwhile I'm thinking that one of the best ways to expend my progressive political energies between now and November would be to promote Stein and the Greens, to encourage any and all to learn what she stands for, and make clear how far short Clinton's ideas fall. No, Jill probably won't win. Is that all that matters? She is saying what needs to be said, and seeing what so many refuse to see. I would like to hope that her campaign this year, if spread widely enough, will plant the seeds of a real victory--not just a default to some future Clinton--in some later, but (hopefully) not too late election. What other hope is there?