For older people, Green Party is best known as being the “Ralph Nader Party,” and it’s only time in the sun (so to speak) was when Nader was the candidate in 2000, and he was blamed for handing Florida, and the election to George W. Bush. Nader denies that vehemently, but he’s history now, anyway. Jill Stein has been the presidential candidate in 2012 and this year, but she still leads a misunderstood party. “Aren’t they the weirdos who attack fishing boats?”
As the “Green” name suggests, the party fights for environmental causes, but they are more than that. But first, let’s see why the party is not just Ralph Nader anymore, according to the Inquisitr.
1. The Internet Has Changed Everything. The chief factor keeping the Democrats and Republicans in charge of everything in America is the billions and billions of dollars in free advertising from the mainstream media. . .
2. The Sanders Campaign Changed Everything. Forever. . . In 2016, it is no longer a legitimate thing to say that a progressive outsider cannot win. . .There have been models put forth that had Sanders winning a three-way race against Trump and Clinton. . .
3. Two Historically Unpopular Candidates. . . Google searches for third-party candidates skyrocketed 1,150 percent last week as voters began to come to terms with the dismal choice that’s being imposed upon them, and it’s got the Democrats scared. . .
4. #NeverTrump. If there’s one thing progressives and moderate Democrats can come together on, it’s that Donald Trump would be a terrible president. . .looking for another candidate to keep Trump out. If Jill Stein picks up steam, she will be that candidate.
5. People Are Energized. . . when the heartbreak of watching their beloved Bernie shuffle back to the Senate finally clears, they’re going to be aggressively energized, already organized, and expertly experienced from the Bernie campaign. . .
6. First Woman President. Come on.. .Every Berniecrat in America has felt a twinge of sorrow for not being able to get behind a woman candidate. And now we can! A female candidate who hasn’t devoted her life to propping up all the sickest aspects of patriarchy. . .
7. People Will Fall In Love With Jill Stein. Ralph Nader is a good man, a hard-working man, and the Greens loved his platform, but he was never beloved as a person. Jill Stein is charming, witty, compassionate, intelligent, and delightful.
The Green Party has seen more enthusiasm than ever, according to Politico, and could do better if they’d stop being so “kooky.”
There are a lot of people that could be — affectionately or unaffectionately — referred to as kooks. The kook-ism is what most people know the party for. Stein hasn’t gone out of her way to help that reputation, with statements about vaccines and the dangers of wireless internet.
Julian Assange spoke to the convention on a livestream, from the Ecuadorean embassy where he’s avoiding rape charges, to express his opinion that the choice between Trump and Clinton was like a choice between “cholera and gonorrhea.” The party’s vice presidential nominee, Ajamu Baraka, has a long history of fringe statements and beliefs, like his opinion that the Malaysian airliner shot down over Ukraine looked like a “false flag” operation.
The real problem for third-party candidates is that they don’t get enough votes to make a difference. Then, the media use that as an excuse not to cover them, and that’s why they don’t get votes, and the cycle repeats.
Roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults are unfamiliar with third-party presidential candidates Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party. . . The results are based on a July 13-17 Gallup poll, conducted before the Republican and Democratic national conventions. It is unclear what impact, if any, those conventions have had on views of the Libertarian and Green Party candidates, who receive far less media attention than Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. . .
For the most part, third-party candidates have not been especially popular, even among Americans who are familiar with them. Only Ralph Nader in 2000 had significantly higher favorable (42%) than unfavorable (22%) ratings, in a year when he won nearly 3% of the national popular vote. . .
Johnson and Stein are. . .better known than many past third-party candidates, including some who ran on the Libertarian and Green Party tickets. But they are not nearly as well-known as [Ross] Perot and Nader, the third-party candidates who won the greatest share of the vote in recent elections.
. . . the 2016 campaign has already deviated from the historical playbook with a political outsider claiming the Republican nomination and both parties nominating candidates whom the American public views more negatively than positively, even after their nominating conventions. Thus, if more voters dissatisfied with Trump and Clinton choose to register their displeasure by voting for a third-party candidate rather than voting for the “lesser of two evils,” this year’s third-party candidates could surpass their parties’ vote totals in prior elections.
Polls suggest that most young people will “hold their nose” and vote for Clinton, because they’re afraid of Trump. Others will “vote their conscience,” and go with Stein. But there’s also a likelihood that many young people will just not vote.
Other Sanders Democrats and n on-Trump Republicans might not show up to vote, as Sanders campaign uniquely appealed to a demographic that not only traditionally exhibits poor levels of voter turnout, but also one that Clinton typically struggles with: millennials.
Millennials, in addition to other disaffected slices of the population, may abstain from voting altogether. The average number of respondents who have checked not voting in all publicly available polls since March is 5.8 percent. During this timeframe over the past three election cycles, the average was much lower ranging between 1.52 to 3.57 percent.
Despite some polls showing up to 90% of Bernie fans now supporting Hillary, FiveThirtyEight says a full one-third are still undecided.
Without third-party candidates, Clinton was already doing much better with Bernie’s fans. Still, the convention helped: She moved from 79 percent up to 91 percent among Sanders supporters in CNN’s polls, 68 percent to 75 percent per Marist, and 59 percent to 65 percent in YouGov’s surveys.
But the sizable portion of Sanders supporters defecting from Clinton when given other options could still be a problem for the Clinton campaign if the election tightens.
As we noted elsewhere, Libertarian Gary Johnson’s main focus is to garner 15% in the national polls, so that he can be included in the presidential debates, and have a real platform for his views. Likewise, the Green Party’s Jill Stein can’t really expect to win, but the party has stated that if they can get 5% of the vote in November, that will give them public financing in 2020—with the hope to get the same 15%, then, that Johnson seeks this year.
Of course, the major parties will warn that the third-party candidates are just “spoilers,” who can’t win, but can destroy the chances of one of the major candidates. To counter this argument, the Libertarians and Greens are focusing on trying to get votes in “deep blue” and “deep red” states, where the major candidates can’t lose. Voters in those states already feel that their vote “doesn’t matter,” so they may want to put their vote where it really can count.
