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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Yes
Here’s the thing though, Americans don’t have the luxury of going to another party, because only two of them are viable. So if you want to make political change your choices are incredibly restricted.
There’s plenty of parties and you can make your own too. Perhaps they don’t pay or make you popular as much as red and blue but that’s another story.
Unless it is a local election, you have no chance of winning unless you’re in one of the two main parties. So candidates almost always choose to join one of the parties.
I guess these who are in for the seat in power and not to back their ideals do just that.
I disagree. While that’s probably the case nine times out of ten, just because somebody is in a higher power seat doesn’t mean they got there because they’re greedy.
There needs to be change and protections at higher levels of government too.