As we all know, there's been a lot of vitriol flung around this presidential election season, and events unfolding recently at the DNC have only deepened the rift between Hillary and Bernie supporters in many instances. With the revelation from WikiLeaks that the democratic party colluded with the Clinton campaign from the outset, and the failure to acknowledge many of the concerns of Hillary's dissenters throughout the convention while patronizing them to add salt to the wounds, some of the progressive wing of the democratic party have been seeking alternative third party options in the form of Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
Unsurprisingly, this has brought some negative attention to Jill from her own set of critics in the form of this Slate article entitled Jill Stein's ideas are terrible. She is not the savior the left is looking for. Now it's one thing if you want to make the usual pragmatic argument that as a third party candidate, Jill has no chance of winning, so your vote for her really just counts as a vote for Trump, who in this case would be the perceived greater evil. However, it's another thing entirely to make such a ridiculously flamboyant statement that implies the totality of Jill's platform is idiotic based on some largely irrelevant issues as we're about to see here. In fact on nearly all the big issues that matter, Jill is pretty spot-on for progressives, from getting money out of politics and campaign finance reform, to universal healthcare and ending the student debt crisis. And for many of the issues where Jill is "wrong", she's only wrong in the sense that her goal is unrealistic, yet nonetheless still noble.
Case-in-point, so what do Jill's critics have to offer as a rebuttal? She wants to cut defense spending in half, close 700 foreign military bases, and reach 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. And...? Yep, that's it basically. Wait... These are the alleged bad policies? As many may know, the US currently spends more than several of its next-nearest competitors combined on military expenses. It's funny that in any other modern first world country, cutting such egregiously bloated military spending would seem like a no-brainer, but here in the US the military spending has gotten so massively out of control that it has become seen as unreasonable to be reasonable about it. Now on the other hand, a more compelling argument could certainly be made that it's wholly unrealistic to expect 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, even with strong cooperation from congress. However again, for progressives this would all still be taken with the acknowledgement that seeking renewable energy solutions is a positive goal regardless, and even if she fails to reach it, what's the worst-case scenario? We reach 30% renewable energy instead? Damn, I'm really reeling from this revelation. Clearly this would be disastrous. I mean, we could have tried less and only raised our renewable energy output to 20%; the clear superior alternative! Sarcasm aside, it should be noted that Bernie Sanders previously gave a succinct analogy on policy negotiation. If you start with a full loaf of bread, you will likely end up with half, but start with half a loaf of bread, and you will be left with crumbs. Some of Jill's policy goals may be unrealistic, but by going into the conversation strong from the onset, she is more likely to end up closer to the ideal goal regardless. Pointing out that her renewable energy goals are unrealistic is hardly reason alone to jump ship, let alone even necessarily count as a negative to begin with.
To be fair though, the Slate article by Jordan Weissmann does go on to make slightly more compelling points. Jordan continues with pointing out Jill's policy on GMOs and pesticides, elaborating on the fact that in spite of there being no scientific basis for claiming negative health impacts resulting from GMOs, Jill wants to require foods containing genetically modified material to be labeled with it. Never mind that Sanders shares the same policy anyway, but even if this is the case, while Jill's agricultural policies would add needless bureaucracy to the agriculture sector, and cause some loss in revenues by legitimizing fears of the science illiterate, in the end this is all negligible nitpicking and small-fry gripes compared to greater issues at stake. I mean are we seriously having a conversation about the supposed egregiousness of Jill Stein's GMO policy while both of the mainstream candidates will more than likely continue deregulation of banks and multi-national corporations, job-exporting free trade deals, tax cuts, loopholes, and subsidies for the wealthy, all contributing towards increasing the risk of another global economic collapse? What a joke. Hillary Clinton's VP pick Tim Kaine supported TPP, off-shore drilling, anti-union right-to-work measures, and was even advocating for deregulation of banks right up until his selection for vice president. And considering Clinton's flip-flopping on the TPP, shaky convictions on the Keystone pipeline, support of the fracking industry, taking large sums of money from the big banks, and refusing to release her speeches on them, it isn't an altogether unfair assumption that she shares the same views despite her claims to the contrary. Let's also not forget Hillary's history of supporting the disastrous Iraq war, her flip-flopping on universal healthcare, as well as her support for the PATRIOT Act which paved the way for warrantless spying on Americans. But shut up about all that, we've got some GMO labels to bitch about. Jill's anti-science policies may be disappointing, but they pale in comparison to some of the horrendous policies and lack of judgment of her opposition, and certainly aren't cause for pulling the parachute. We need not even address some of Trump's most inane policies.
Perhaps Jordan's most damning criticism of Jill Stein is his point regarding her misunderstanding of the bank bailouts and quantitative easing. But even then he nonchalantly admits his argument hinges on an inconclusive assumption via Occam's razor, and furthermore, it sidesteps the consideration that most presidential candidates likely don't know the finer ins and outs of the Fed either, and that's why they have cabinets with economic advisers and people with greater expertise to counsel them on these sorts of issues. What matters here is that Jill is still right on the substance of the issue, which is that we should similarly employ a large scale bailout package for college students currently being choked by crushing debt in the same way that the banks were given a bailout for blowing up the economy in 2008, except in this case the debt accrued by students was never deliberately caused by malicious intents unlike our other example here.
Finally, Jordan accuses Stein of ignoring history based on his own glazing over of key details on history. For example, he rebutted her line about Obama leading the charge for austerity by basically admitting that Obama did in fact try to work with John Boehner and the Republicans to push cutting social security and entitlements via the "grand bargain", but implies that it doesn't count since the legislation never technically passed, and he further notes that Obama only made some of the Bush tax cuts permanent, not all. This vague use of the term "some" neglects to mention that it was really most of the Bush tax cuts that were made permanent; 82% to be precise if you go by the CBPP's numbers, and he further ignores the context that in spite of Obama facing unprecedented opposition from Republicans on the fiscal cliff, there was really no reason he couldn't have minimally struck a deal that would merely extend the Bush tax cuts a few more years rather than make them permanent, especially considering that he held the veto power in this case and all he had to do was simply let the tax cuts expire if the Republicans didn't take his offer; a risk they more than likely would not gamble with if their donors' taxes are on the line and Obama is offering an easy way out.
To be clear, no candidate is ideal, and no candidate should be expected to fit one's views 100% to absurdly puritanical degrees. Jill Stein has some legitimate problems as the Slate article points out, but its dismissive conclusions that it draws from them ignore bigger-picture context and come off as exaggerating flaws without merit. Jill Stein is not the ideal candidate, but quite frankly neither was Sanders nor anyone else for that matter, and to pretend that they're miles apart from each other is a rather disingenuous and cheap attempt to push progressives back to Hillary's camp. Jill is still a no-brainer compared to her competition on the important issues that matter for progressives, and if you want to make a more compelling argument against her, you're better off playing the age-old lesser-of-two-evils card. Otherwise spare me this nonsense about Jill Stein being such a terrible candidate because our vegetables might go up a few cents at the grocery store. If you're going to inflate such pathetically inconsequential policies to such significant proportions, then surely you'll start foaming at the mouth over Hillary's Iraq war vote and hawkish foreign policy am I right?
Of course not. That's what I thought, fakers.
Edit / Footnote [10/7/2024]: Although I stand by much of what I said in this blog and nothing pertaining strictly to the facts is technically inaccurate, I would like to point out that Jill Stein is nonetheless likely a grifter getting paid by Russians or other nefarious interests, which kind of undermines the sincerity of any supposed progressive policies that she claims to care about, so I no longer consider myself a supporter of hers, but I will keep this blog up just for posterity's sake, and to show how my perspective has shifted over time.
