You’d think midterms would be a great time to get your name out there and run high profile candidates to win House districts led by charlatans…
You’d think midterms would be a great time to get your name out there and run high profile candidates to win House districts led by charlatans…
I would not be surprised if a lot of money was funneled into third party campaigns during general elections by PACs of the two main parties as a spoiler strategy. I would be shocked if you tracked campaign contributions to the Green party and to Jill Stein in particular, and didn’t find that most of it came from some Republican PAC. If Jill can siphon any votes from Biden, all the better for the Trump campaign.
The Democrats probably do it, too, except Republicans locked out dissent with the “Thou Shalt Not Defy Our (current) God, or we’ll destroy your local race with vengeance next chance we get” tactic, and it works. Many Conservatives may disagree with Trump, but they’re all terrified little removed of standing up to him because they’ll get dumped on an lose their jobs if they do. So there’s fewer spoilers for Democrats to fund.
But I’d be real money that most of Stein’s financing comes from conservative PACs, and that’s why you only see her pop up out of here gopher hole once every 4 years.
There was just an article I saw today about Republicans helping Cornel West’s campaign in Arizona
A lot of Russian money, too.
Maybe. I’m not that suspicious, and I think even Jill would balk at that if she knew.
I don’t believe she’s intentionally trying to be a spoiler, or is immoral. I do think she must be fantastically naïve if she thinks she’s doing anything other than helping Trump.
She dined with Russian oligarchs at an RT party, so I don’t think she’d really balk at it.
I mean the woman who supposedly paid her own way to go to a celebration of a Russian propaganda news station gala, to promote “peace” where she got to meet Putin and afterwards bragged/complained about how she only gets air time over there?
OK. Wow, I didn’t know. I don’t really track her.
That’s unfortunate; I guess there aren’t really any strong moral leaders, after all.
Generally speaking, there’s very few- if any- moral people that can stay successful in politics. Bernie. maybe AOC. But I wouldn’t be shocked to find they have a few skeletons, too.
Everyone has skeletons. Expecting people to be saints is unreasonable. I just think there are particular sins we don’t need in our leaders.
Drug use? Fine; whatever. Sexual picadillos? As long as it isn’t little kids, I don’t care. Cheating on their spouse? I don’t care. That’s between them and their spouse. I really don’t give a shit that Trump was using prostitutes; I do care that the hypocrite Christians are looking the other way on that one. But IMO, none of this is a major influence on their ability to do their jobs.
But: taking money from foreign interests is bad. I wish we could illegalize all organized “funding”. Money in politics is a huge problem that we haven’t solved.
Stein and West from Biden, Oliver from Trump, and RFK Jr from both.
You can track green party campaign contributions via the federal election commission. You don’t need to incorrectly speculate. Jill Stein isn’t getting republican money; in fact she just qualified for federal matching funds from individual donors.
Are you aware of just how much money is hidden behind shell PACs? I’m speculating because I don’t have the resources to track down who’s behind who; who’s behind who on every contribution.
Individual contributions are safe, and it’s good for her that enough individual donors she qualified for matching funds. I mean, it’s a pretty low bar; $5,000 in (each of) 20 states, but, yeah, it’s good for her. It’s enough to run how many national ads, do you think? It’s nothing compared to the millions being spent by the other parties, and - you did make a good suggestion. I should go and see just where her contributions are coming from.
I’m not an investigative journalist, and my interest in this is so low even posting comments on Lemmy is taxing my patience. But I will say: better statisticians than myself have said that Ralph Nader had a significant spoiler effect on Al Gore; Ralph Nader gave the presidency to Bush. I contributed, because I was young, ignorant, and I hated Tipper Gore; and I voted for Nader.
Nader never had a chance; he didn’t come remotely close to being elected. By voting for Nader, I was helping Bush.
Bernie helped sink Hillary; his lukewarm endorsement, and the vitriolic intrangency of his base, tipped the scales. If the Bernie Bros had all voted for Hillary, history would be much different. We wouldn’t have an activist, right-wing supreme court - the single biggest damage Trump caused in his term.
As long as the US uses the Electoral College and First-Past-the-Post voting, this is the reality. Idealism will not fix it: voting for third parties won’t fix it. No third party will win even a single state, much less the election. And while I try to have patience with idealists, I don’t think the world can afford to faff about with people like Jill Stein. The world can’t afford to have younger people learn the hard lesson I did. Votes count, but only votes for major parties. Other voters may as well stay home for all the harm they’ll do.