https://www.salon.com/2024/09/12/jill-stein-schooled-on-in-brutal-breakfast-club-interview/
“Asked how many members of the House of Reps there were, Stein guessed 600-some before hosts corrected her.”
Wouldn't a serious politician not being paid by the Russians actually, like, fucking know that?!
Especially as she’s actually run for President twice before! It’s like coming into the same job interview multiple times and giving worse answers each time.
Why are Democrats afraid of a candidate stealing votes if the opposition party is doing worse with every election?
No one is “afraid” of Jill Stein. What they’re afraid of is a GOP and Russian misinformation campaign disguised as a third party presidential campaign causing chaos in an election with likely extremely close margins of victory.
The idea that anyone is afraid of Stein is hilarious by the way. The 74yr old perennial candidate whose only elected experience is partial representation of a district in a municipal legislature for a town of 30k people? Yeah, not a serious candidate - because if she was, you’d hear something from her in between pointless presidential campaigns.
It's sad that this has been repeatedly explained to this user, and yet without any substantive rebuttal, they persist without any evolution of their view.
Isn't that a bit... Odd? Perhaps suss? Weird?
Look at the math.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html
https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/president
Two last elections were won with 1 or 2 percent of certain states swinging one way or another. 1% of people voting Green in a swing state can absolutely hand the election to the fascists.
Two last elections were won with 1 or 2 percent of certain states
Greens and Libertarians heavily underperformed in those states relative to the national vote.
Folks who clung to those parties had no interest in voting except as a protest against the duopoly.
Thing is, research organizations have and do survey the public about this. A LOT of pollsters were surveying the public about RFK during this round.
A non-zero amount of 3rd party voters always say they’ll move toward Trump or Harris depending which 3rd party option falls off the pick list.
And when races are tight enough to be decided by a few hundred or a few thousand votes, a small non-zero amount of people can be the difference.
A non-zero amount of 3rd party voters always say they’ll move toward Trump or Harris depending which 3rd party option falls off the pick list.
The biggest 3rd party margins are in states with firm single party majorities. Kicking RFK Jr has a very different consequence in California or Texas than Pennsylvania or Michigan.
And when races are tight enough to be decided by a few hundred or a few thousand votes
It's easier to simply kick ideologically adjacent rivals off the ballot than broaden your base or improve your voter outreach.
The real problem democrats are having is that Jill Stein leads Kamala Harris with Muslims in these three battleground states. And the assumption is that if Stein simply surrenders to Harris and walks away from the campaign, those Muslim voters will collapse into the Democratic Party.
But the assumption fails to address why these communities are polling at historic numbers for an out-layer candidate. Was Stein a rhetorical mastermind who could rally hundreds or thousands of votes to her quixotic campaign? Or is there something about the current Dem administration that Muslims have a problem with?
If you click into the state by state results that I posted, the click in on swing states and view full results, you’ll see that some of the razor thin wins of the past would’ve flipped if a candidate got a hair of a 3rd party’s votes.
That’s why both the GOP and DNC have been worrying about 3rd parties this season.
Spoiler Effect, too!
Gerrymandering only has to do with US Congressional House districts. Though I take it your point may be that the EC and Gerrymandering are propping up a dying party., which is absolutely true.
Bonus: Weevil ran away from a discussion we had when they tried to claim Democrats were blocking DC statehood because they, "didn't want a black state." when in fact it has always been Republicans to blame for blocking it. lmfaowtf360bbq.
Exactly. In a fair and independent contest, the concept of a "spoiler" wouldn't really exist. But given that the Presidency basically gets decided by a few million voters who live in swing states' contested districts, it turns out it's really easy for a niche candidate to derail the more likely ones just by trying to appeal specifically to them.
Nothing you can do about people like that shitting on your doorstep and running away other than to hose it down and hang up a sign that says "Please do not shit on porch". We live in a post-truth society.
Framing this as only a small group of voters in swing states is stupid. No candidate can win with just a few million votes scattered across a handful of states.
You are taking something very minor and turning it into a major problem. Its like saying Hilary would have won if not for the last minute news reports about her emails or whatever it was, when she lost because she didnt appeal widely enough to the american people, and carried an awful attitude while doing it.
You're not getting my point. I'm not saying someone can win with just a handful of voters from swing states, I'm saying that someone can stop another candidate from winning by courting those voters. Hence, a spoiler.
Add in actual prevention of people to cast a vote. Voter ID laws, closing polling stations in specific areas, trying to prevent mail-in voting, actively protesting in voting areas to scare away voters.
I'm not afraid of shit. Jill Stein has proven she's anti-science with her stances on GMOs and vaccines. She's proven she's politically illiterate and unfit for office by not being able to answer simple questions about our government. And she's proven she's a Russian asset by meeting with Putin officials and encouraging people to vote for Donald Trump.
Because the spoiler effect is the result of geometric proximity, not the strength of candidates.
Because doing worse doesn't mean they're not still an imminent threat to our democracy.
There are 10x more non-voters than Green voters in any given election. If you abolish the Green Party, all you're doing is feeding those Green voters into the non-voting demographic.
Why would any Green vote for a party that believes their organization does not have a right to exist?
all you’re doing is feeding those Green voters into the non-voting demographic.
What's your proof of this claim?
I guess maybe you're not being intentionally obtuse.
The comment was about why democrats worry about losing to the Republicans due the green party taking votes because the Republican party is weakening.
I was saying that the republican party weakening doesn't mean they aren't still a threat.
No party wants to lose voters. No company wants to lose customers. No house of worship wants to lose congregants. It’s that simple; I believe.
Is not problem. She received excellent education from People’s University of Harvard, near the warm-water port city of Boston in Massachusetts oblast. Do not worry about these silly details.
/s because internet
If Jill Stein and The Green Party were serious, they would advocate for progressive policies from within the Democratic party, push for ranked choice voting in each state, and run for local elections.
There is a ton of work that needs to be done before a third party is a politically viable strategy, there is no way Jill Stein isn't aware of that.
If they were serious, they would be building Party infrastructure down ballot. Taking over state houses and local government positions. Doing an every four Year presidential run doesn’t help in the slightest. The most progressive messaging that has actually made some semblance of an impact is Bernie.
It's not about getting seats at the moment. With the two party system that's not a pragmatic use of resources. Until we have ranked choice voting, they seem to believe the best use of resources is what they are doing. Give Dems an ultimatum to pull further left or get spoiled.
Any Lemmy Green Party shills trying to convince people to vote for Stein over Harris want to weigh in?
Anyone?
She appears incapable of recognizing reality, and we don’t need another candidate like that. By staying so obstinate her votes will likely go to Trump. If she doesn’t understand that political reality, she shouldn’t be anywhere near a general election.
A normal person would learn from their multiple failures, but not Stein.
Giving her the benefit of the doubt that she isn't a Russian agent, if she doesn't understand how the Electoral College works, then it makes sense she doesn't see herself as a spoiler and a waste of a vote. Clearly in the past 20ish years, she must have come across FiveThirtyEight and, so even a guess of 538 would be somewhat reasonable. 600 just shows lack of reasoning skills and/or knowledge of how the electoral college is made up.
The more you look for it the more you recognize that a lot of the people in charge of politics (and business for that matter) aren't smart or knowledgeable or even master strategists, they're just the sort of person who skirt through life through some combination of charisma and utter willingness to say whatever it takes to please the people who can advance their career.
Like you expect the dumb shit they say to be an act by a keen mind who understands politics deeply and is manipulating the public into advancing their interests, but they're often just fucking idiots with no principles who whenever they've been stymied due to their idiocy just let it slide off their back and move on to a new path with utmost confidence.
Jill Stein isn't going to slink away into the darkness after a public demonstration of political ignorance for a lady whose whole public persona is supposed to be about politics, she's just going to forget about it and keep the scam going. Not knowing the basics of government isn't going to stop her from saying she knows how to fix the problems with government. Not being on the ballot in states is unimportant for whether it sounds good to her in the moment to say they can win in all 50 states. They're all just unimportant "facts" and you can just keep talking and most people will forget or not know that you're an idiot.
Jill Stein may be an idiot politician with laughably unrealistic positions and a totally unworkable take on foreign policy (even dining with Putin) but she’s also a physician who practiced internal medicine for decades.
She’s not an idiot in general. I think she’s just unbelievably naive about people and their motivations.
Ben Carson was a (by all accounts excellent) brain surgeon.
I'm sorry, but that man is stupid.
Brains are weird, man. I work in a STEM field, but I had 3 or 4 semesters of University before declaring my major, and therefore I was able to get a much more well-rounded education than my colleagues, and I will tell you: It shows. Big time.
Lots of people who are great at what they do, and when it comes to their one very specific, silo'd, expertise, they're brilliant.
But in terms of general intelligence, rationality, ability to think critically in a novel situation, etc? Not bright.
Then there's the old (true) joke: What do you call someone who graduated at the bottom of their class in medical school? Doctor.
I have worked for a university for over 25 years so I have seen in all. My first wife, who also worked for the same university, worked in a computer lab in the psych dept and they would have the most domain specific intelligent people with no common sense whatsoever. Her and a colleague used to joke about the PhD students “I bet she runs with scissors”.
It's honestly a real shame. STEM careers are obviously extremely important, but we are doing students a major disservice by limiting the scope of their education so much. Maybe these degrees should be five year programs...
Did Ben Carson attempt to do surgery on himself? Otherwise I can’t explain at all how dumb he was. Wow! Thanks for the example.
Probably after he got shot by his best friend and the bullet ricocheted off his belt buckle and hit his friend killing him (wasn't that the story? Lol I'm not going to bother looking it up. If I got any details wrong, the reality was at least just as stupid).
A specialist in one field isn't necessarily adept in another, and particularly coming from STEM to humanities seems a particularly treacherous transition because so much about humans is based on premises that cold, logical STEM principles just aren't aware of. That doesn't mean we STEMs are stupid, we just don't know just how much there is that we don't know and would need to know before we can understand, let alone predict human behaviour.
I know I've found myself grossly misjudging human reactions in some case because humans are complex and there are so mamy premises and factors affecting individual behaviour and so many more for collective behaviour that they're effectively non-deterministic and even predicting the probabilities requires such familiarity with the people or demographics, respectively.
All that is to say: Yes, I think so too. She's well-educated, but not above tripping over the same, common stone that many smart people have stumbled on.
I have a relatively common "rare" condition and saw over 40 doctors while seeking a diagnosis. I can personally attest that most physicians range between not very bright to astoundingly stupid. You don't have to be intelligent to become a physician, just dedicated with access to the right resources.
Look she's a full of shit opportunist. A distraction for people who think they're too moral to vote for corporate dems.
That's a bit disturbing - how can someone with so little knowledge of how the system works change it without breaking it?
The Green party has some good positions that I'd be willing to support (such as having the US join the International Criminal Court), but at the same time I sense a big change from the days when Ralph Nader was the candidate.
Jill Stein on the Breakfast Club? Sounds like a must watch. I'm surprised she hasn't made more appearances like this.
I would have had to guess too, but I'm not in politics where that's something I should know. What I do know and would have answered is "not the right proportion to the population".
It's actually a harder question than it seems... If you're asking about the number of seats, that's easy. 435 in the House, 100 in the Senate.
But if you ask about the PEOPLE, suddenly a lot harder due to deaths, resignations, and vacancies.
I legit couldn't tell you the number of people right now without looking it up and I'd like to think I'm pretty plugged in.
I think you’re overthinking it. This was the actual reported exchange:
Later in the interview, Rye attempted to demonstrate the Green Party’s failure to build power from a grassroots level. She asked Stein how many members of the House of Representatives there were.
“How many total are there? What is it, 600, some number?” Stein said, before Rye set the record straight.
I don't think anyone would fault you for saying there are 435 members of the house, especially because that number is also wrong (there are six additional non-voting members).
If she had answered more correctly than the number of voting seats I wouldn't have a problem with it...
Where I live we get lots of local candidates who are some combination of democrat-green-progressive-working family alliances. Building coalitions from the bottom up like that, and showing that people with “green” in their bio can really be elected, is the way to move things forward. At the national level, the two-party system is far too entrenched to have a third party be anything but a defacto spoiler that turns off their own supporters more that anything else.
Alleged russian agents aside:
I actually have no problem with a politician not remembering the exact number of House representatives there are. That number actively does not matter because it is never a case of "I need 435 to vote for this". It isn't even "I need 218". It is "After checking with everyone, we need to convince five more people to vote with us".
But there are definitely ways to answer that convey that. Guessing a number and hoping you got it right is... not.
Also, because I had no idea and other people in this thread are outright wrong:
435 in the house. 100 in the senate. And 3 electors for DC and Puerto Rico (?) who don't get a say in legislature because Yes Taxation Without Representation.
Would you trust a brain surgeon who didn’t know and understand the various regions and structures in the brain? Or an electrician who wasn’t exactly clear on what the building codes allowed regarding which gauge of wire could be installed and what material it was made of?
A President shouldn’t have to know everything, but they should at least know enough to ace a high school civics exam.
Would you trust a brain surgeon who didn’t know and understand the various regions and structures in the brain?
Yes. Because surgeons are the grease monkeys of medicine and I care more that they know exactly what they are doing to a specific part of my brain rather than are reciting generalist brain facts.
Or an electrician who wasn’t exactly clear on what the building codes allowed regarding which gauge of wire could be installed and what material it was made of?
Very different scenario. That electrician is doing a specific job in my house, not wiring up an entire grid.
Which is kind of what it is. Getting a bill passed is very much about knowing what specific parts of Congress you need to interface with. And being a leader is actually having people who canvas the other congress people and figure out who to focus on.
Maybe it is just my engineer brain but I always prefer to work with people who know what it is important and are able to quickly look up the other stuff.
"Nurse please pull up Google and see where I'm supposed to be slicing this patient open from"
No. I expect them to have figured that out during the prep for my surgery. Even a surgeon who does that exact procedure every week should be reviewing the steps before they scrub up. Same with the team.
Yeah, we’re both probably getting too abstract here :)
Which is kind of what it is. Getting a bill passed is very much about knowing what specific parts of Congress you need to interface with. And being a leader is actually having people who canvas the other congress people and figure out who to focus on.
Maybe it is just my engineer brain but I always prefer to work with people who know what it is important and are able to quickly look up the other stuff.
So I guess the question is: Do you believe any of this applies in the analysis of Stein’s qualifications? She has essentially zero experience as an elected official, she has zero experience as a leader of any kind. And she has not demonstrated a basic understanding of the fundamental structure of the government.
Or do you believe there is any evidence that offers evidence to the contrary?
Oh, I think stein is a fucking moron and, at best, a useful idiot for putin.
This? This doesn't factor into that at all.
No. Just no fuck that. That's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard.
The President is the head of the Executive Branch of the US government. As much as it is analogous to a corporation, the position of President is akin to CEO.
Do you think it would ever be acceptable for the chief executive officer of an organization responsible for the well being of hundreds of millions of people to not know how many board members they have?
You might not know this if you grew up in Russia, but the number of Representative in the US House is something we learn very early on. It is one of the first and most basic civics lessons Americans learn.
It's one thing for ignorant adult Americans to not know there are 435 Reps. But the President of the United States? Are you having a fucking laugh?
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