Dr. Steinister - Part Two

Near where I live, there is a house with a "Cease-Fire Now" lawn sign opposing Israeli military operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.  A couple of days ago, I passed by it and found another lawn sign next to it - a Jill Stein campaign sign.  

Although I am a former Stein voter who has since expressed regret for voting for her in 2016 - but not regretting voting for a third-party candidate, as I could never vote for Hillary Clinton - I continue to stress that while the once and present Green Party presidential candidate may have been a factor in costing Hillary the Presidency against Donald Trump in 2016 in the states in what used to be called the 'blue firewall,"  as the vote tallies in those states show above, she was not the only factor, and that Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson also cost Hillary Clinton votes in these states (as this CNN article from 2016 explains). Johnson was as much a possible spoiler as Dr. Stein was.  Moreover, many people who voted for Dr. Stein or Johnson might have stayed home if neither one had been on the ballot.

That out of the way, I am happy to present more evidence that Dr. Stein is a fraud.  I once complained how progressives did nothing to start a new party to replace the Democrats after Hillary Clinton's well-deserved loss and the Democratic party's descent into Whig-like irrelevance, but did you notice?  Dr. Stein was one of those progressives who sat on her hands.  In fact, she disappeared as quickly as I expected the Democratic Party to.  She sat out 2020 and let another Green Party member carry the standard in the presidential election that year, and now she's back, promising a more just society if she were to win against all odds.  Don't you believe it.

Her stand for the Palestinians seems contrived and incredulous, since she never spoke out about the Middle East before, but her emphasis on Michigan, with its large Arab and Islamic population, seems to be calculated into helping Trump at Kamala Harris' expense.   Because it is.  She has expressed no fear that her efforts to make inroads in Michigan could help Trump win, just as she doesn't regret that Trump may have won in 2016 because of her candidacy.

Justice for the Green Party should, as its name implies, include environmental justice, but Dr. Stein has benefited from mutual fund holdings that have investments in fossil fuels valued at up to $937,775, which Dr. Stein defended in 2016 by saying that her mutual funds invest in an array of companies and that oil and gas companies are only a small part of the mix.  Okay, so why, as MoveOn.org recently reported,  did she knowingly invest up to $500,000 in a stock index fund that invests in the Keystone XL pipeline that Dr. Stein says she opposes?  And why, after she denounced President Biden for his handling of the Norfolk Southern derailment in Ohio, did she knowingly invest in index funds that have holdings in that same railroad?  

It seems to me that if Dr. Stein really were concerned about fossil fuels, she would have made a sincere effort to invest in more environmentally friendly companies or in mutual funds that invest in such companies.  All you have to do is look at The Nation for ads for such mutual funds.  And if Dr. Stein were concerned about advancing progressive causes, she would be doing the work of advancing them every day, like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) does.  I don't agree with everything AOC says, and I have grown uncomfortable with her narrow test of what a progressive is (Martin O'Malley, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris would all fall short), but say what you will, she does just that - put in the work.  And it's easy to see why she ran for office as a Democrat even though the party was moribund when she entered politics.  Because even a declining, irrelevant, disconnected, out-of-touch Democratic Party is preferable to a Green Party at the height of its powers.

And the Green Party of the United States, unlike its European counterparts, will never be a player in national politics unless it gets rid of hypocrites and opportunists like Dr. Stein.