“Jill Stein is a useful idiot for Russia. After parroting Kremlin talking points and being propped up by bad actors in 2016 she’s at it again,” DNC spokesman Matt Corridoni said in a statement to The Bulwark. “Jill Stein won’t become president, but her spoiler candidacy—that both the GOP and Putin have previously shown interest in—can help decide who wins. A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump.”
The point is she doesn’t have a base. She’s never actually worked to get one. She comes out of the woodwork every 4 years to poke holes in the liberal candidate talking points and cause these rifts in the left. The people who vote for her are almost all independent voters who are “sick and tired of voting for the lesser of two evils”. Yet not one of those people will get up off their asses to push their local legislatures to enact ranked choice voting in order to provide an actual avenue for a third party candidate to get elected.
I’ve got perennial Green voters on my street. They’re in their 70s. The entire reason the Green Party exists stems from liberals who were burned out of the Carter/Clinton neoliberal turn during the Reagan Era.
We’ve had Democrats promising universal health care, public higher education, environmental protections, and global demilitarization for the last 50 years. She doesn’t have to poke holes, she simply sticks her fingers through the Swiss Cheese track record that half a century of corporate liberalism has created.
That’s a flat out lie. The Greens and Libertarians are the only two significant activist forces for RCV, and state legislative races are some of the few spots where they can consistently win races. What’s more, these parties very often emerge from activist movements that are rejected by the ostensibly-friendly Big Two parties. Sierra Club produces Green voters in droves, not because they wouldn’t happily caucus with Democrats but because Democrats despise any kind of activist Green movement. Gun clubs and tax abolitionist groups churn out Libertarians for the same reason - mushy pro-cop/pro-war Republicans and Tax-and-Spend governors like Abbott and DeSantis drive libertarians nuts.
The singular reason why Democrats are terrified of the Green Party in this election is that it offers an outlet for all those disaffected Arab-American voters no longer welcome in the party. Its the same reason Republicans shat the bed over Ron Paul and Gary Johnson. They know they can’t deliver on their promises and keep their mega-donor funders happy, so they need to be the only voice in the room making these campaign pledges. Otherwise, people start testing the water with alternatives.