Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently made headlines for calling perennial Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein “predatory” and “not serious.” AOC is right.
Giving voters more choices is a good thing for democracy. But third-party politics isn’t performance art. It’s hard work — which Stein is not doing. As AOC observed: “[When] all you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you’re just showing up once every four years to do that, you’re not serious.”
To be clear: AOC was not critiquing third parties as a whole, or the idea that we need more choices in our democracy. In fact, AOC specifically cited the Working Families Party as an example of an effective third party. The organization I lead, MoveOn, supports their 365-day-a-year efforts to build power for a pro-voter, multi-party system. And I understand third parties’ power to activate voters hungry for alternatives: I myself volunteered for Ralph Nader in 2000, and that experience helped shape my lifelong commitment to people-first politics.
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If they had representatives in the house they could push their right to speak at debates. Senators even more so. Give them 5 senators and 21 representatives, that’s 5% of the legislature rounding generously, and then when they can’t speak at debates it’s something the two major parties should be ashamed of. As it stands now, people care about the parties that can win elections and I’m sorry but the Green Party doesn’t win elections, neither does the libertarian party, the constitution party, or the communist party. The greens and libertarians have both had moments of glory in which case they won the election for the major party they most disagreed with. And that’s coming from a fan of Nader, I think he did amazing work with the department of transportation.