For third-party voters and the growing percentage of Americans who identify themselves as politically independent, this election season could have been a unique opportunity. With two widely disliked major party candidates, 2016 had the potential to be a great year for third parties — although it was probably not plausible that they’d be able to steal the election out from under the feet of the major parties, they could at least secure funding for their party for the next election, or maybe even make the debate stage.
Unfortunately for those third-party voters, whether of the Green or Libertarian bent, they got saddled with a pair of candidates who are questionable at their best and a complete joke at their worst.
Although I personally can’t bring myself to vote third party in this election, I understood until Gary Johnson’s first “Aleppo moment” why people might be voting for him. Then he had his second. Ultimately, those two slip-ups don’t mean that he’s stupid, or even incompetent, and there are a lot of issues that he’s perfectly reasonable and moderate on. But in combination with his aura of general nonsense and his bizarre misunderstanding of issues like climate change, his lack of preparation on foreign affairs questions — even cheap, easy softballs like “name a foreign leader you admire” — make it clear that he’s not really taking the race very seriously.
He still might be the guy for you, if you agree with most of his policies. But he’s not really presenting himself as the viable outlet for partisan discontent that he could have been.
It could be worse, though. He could be Jill Stein.
During the general election, Stein has never managed to poll higher than 4.8 percent, and that only during a one-week stretch at the end of June — right around the time Bernie Sanders’ campaign was dragging its way to a bitter end. Since then, she’s been sitting pretty at two or three percent. You could chalk that up to her being at a disadvantage because she’s a third-party candidate, which she certainly is, but then again, Johnson, who is at the same disadvantage, has never dipped below five percent during the course of the general. So this looks kind of personal. From the voters to Stein — we just don’t like you.
The Green Party itself should be the natural home of the far left, and indeed anyone who thinks Hillary Clinton is too centrist. It is a progressive, environmentalist party. It values social justice, diversity and gender equality. In fact, to dirty hippies like me, the general message of the Green Party is kind of attractive, since I’ve never thought Democrats in government were doing enough to push progressive policy. But although their movement started in the nineties and early aughts, depending on who you ask, it kind of feels like the Greens got stuck in the seventies and never managed to escape.
For example, their 2014 platform included homeopathic medicine. It also specifically includes a provision to encourage growing hemp to use as a paper substitute. It suggests that a solution to joblessness is to live in “low-consumption communities” like homesteads or communes and provide “alternatives to jobs,” because the “concept of a ‘job’ is only a few hundred years old” and employment and unemployment are only artificially different things.
Admittedly, I had to sift through a lot of proposals that don’t sound like those ones to get to those. So maybe I’m cherry-picking. There’s a lot of potential in the Green Party for people who are dissatisfied with the Democrats, as soon as they get rid of the weird stuff.
But then you look back at Jill Stein, who in almost as much denial about the realities of science as she is in her chances of winning the presidency. This is especially egregious since she is a medical doctor who went to Harvard.
She is fearful of GMOs, although most, if not all, public fears about them are scientifically unfounded. She is skeptical of vaccines, which have been proven over and over again to be harmless to children and of incredible benefit to society. When asked, she would rather talk about Big Pharma than clarify a negative position on alternative medicine, which is almost exclusively useless baloney. As Tim Minchin put it: “Do you know what they call ‘alternative medicine’ that's been proved to work? Medicine."
She claims she’s not anti-vaxx or anti-science. But on the topics of vaccines and alternative medicine, anything less than a hard answer — respectively yes, you should get your children vaccinated, if you want them to live and you want to protect society from whatever diseases they might get; and no, homeopathy does not work and it is not a viable alternative to medication for chronic pain, cancer or HIV — can kill people. And all of it, along with her stance on GMOs, are based in distrust of government and needless fear-mongering about the scientific community.
In a political climate where distrust of government has been rising for decades, these are often popular persuasive methods for conservative wing nuts, whom Jill Stein often resembles, but with a little granola sprinkled on top. Where far-right politicians rave about the scientific conspiracy to convince us global warming is real, Stein is raving about how we might not be able to trust the FDA with vaccines and GMOs. Reinforcing ignorance shouldn’t be the purview of a party that claims to be progressive, and neither should denying reliable science, but here is the Green Party figurehead, seeding paranoia and encouraging fear in a nearly Trumpian fashion.
Of course blind trust in government isn’t something anyone should recommend, but neither is blind distrust. Particularly when the distrust you’re cultivating is demonstrably baseless and holds the potential to really hurt people.
Stein is sometimes touted as the progressive choice. She isn’t. Responsible progressives should be repulsed by science denial from the far left just like we are repulsed by science denial from the far right.
Until the Green Party decides to stop nominating people who don’t believe in established facts and start building a long-term, left-wing vision for the future, Sanders supporters should think twice about casting a vote for Stein. If you want a fear-mongering, fact-averse president who plays on voter paranoia, I hear the Republicans are fielding a guy who has a much better chance than Jill.