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(A predictably snide article but one that reflects the recognition that
the GP is becoming more important.)
NY Times, August 7 2016
Green Party Sees Opportunity Amid Wide Voter Discontent
By NOAH REMNICK
HOUSTON — Minutes before she addressed a boisterous crowd at the Green
Party convention here on Saturday, Jill Stein sat in a mirror-walled
room backstage, gazing at her reflection with a look of dumbstruck bliss.
“Can you say that again?” Ms. Stein asked.
“You’re at 6 percent in a new poll,” her press director, Meleiza
Figueroa, repeated. “Sixteen percent with voters under 30.”
Most presidential candidates would blanch at such a figure this late in
the race, but Ms. Stein, 66, is unlike most candidates. As the nominee
of the Green Party, she offers an unswervingly progressive platform that
includes abolishing student debt, establishing a right to a living-wage
job and cutting military spending by at least 50 percent.
With one more nod of disbelief at the poll numbers, she returned to
editing her speech and picking at a plastic container of berries. “Wow,”
whispered Ms. Stein, a physician-turned-activist. “That’s fantastic.”
During a campaign noted for historic levels of discontent with both
major-party candidates, the Greens are projecting a restored sense of
vitality and righteousness. Ms. Stein insists she sees a viable path to
victory that involves disillusioned Democrats and students burdened by
mountainous debt.
Even though that forecast appears more than a tad overzealous, the
Greens are having a minor-party moment, with Ms. Stein drawing around 4
or 5 percent in other polls. When she ran in 2012, she won less than
half of 1 percent of the vote.
Buoying the Greens’ popularity is a recent wave of progressive
movements, most notably the insurgent campaign of Senator Bernie
Sanders. Since Mr. Sanders’s defeat in the Democratic primaries, Ms.
Stein has made no secret of pursuing his voters. During the Democratic
National Convention, she courted throngs of “Bernie-or-Bust” adherents
in and outside the arena in Philadelphia.
And at the Green convention here at the University of Houston, Ms. Stein
did not wait long to appeal to her new followers. “I want to recognize
the people coming out of the Bernie Sanders campaign who helped launch a
national movement and refused to let that movement die in the Democratic
Party,” said Ms. Stein, who formally accepted her party’s nomination
alongside her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, on Saturday. The crowd, in
turn, chanted, “Jill, not Hill!”
Among the newly converted faithful were Blake Weaver and Lisa Malanij,
former Sanders supporters who sought refuge in the Green Party after
what both described as a “heartbreaking and disenchanting” Democratic
primary race.
“They basically orchestrated a coup of the party,” said Mr. Weaver, 30.
“And here I was thinking the Democrats were the good guys.”
“I loved Bernie, but after he dropped out, there was this vacuum,” said
Ms. Malanij, 30. “Now I’m trying to figure out what to do with all this
energy.”
But surveys suggest the vast majority of Sanders supporters, as many as
nine in 10, intend to vote for Hillary Clinton. And many of those who
continue to rebuff her “were not truly Democrats to begin with,” said
Patrick Murray, director of the Polling Institute at Monmouth
University. “These were third-party voters who got pulled to the
Democrats by Bernie,” Mr. Murray said. “Now they’re drifting back Green.”
The Green Party’s modern heyday — or low point, depending on the
perspective — came in 2000, when its candidate, Ralph Nader, received
2.7 percent of the vote, the most the party has achieved in a national
race. He also drew the ire of many Democrats after George W. Bush
defeated Al Gore by a mere 537 votes in the decisive state of Florida.
There, Mr. Nader tallied more than 97,000 votes, most of which,
presumably, would have otherwise gone to Mr. Gore.
Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee, has even championed the Green
Party “because I figure anyone voting for Stein is going to be for
Hillary,” he said recently in Toledo, Ohio.
For the Greens, the spoiler concept is sensitive territory. “We don’t
want to be a threat; we want to be a force for good,” said Julie
George-Carlson, 58, a longtime Green activist who is running for
secretary of state of Missouri. To this day, Ms. George-Carlson said,
neighbors accost her in the grocery store, blaming her for Mr. Bush’s
victory in 2000. Still, she has no regrets.
“I vote for my favorite candidate,” she said. “How dare anyone tell me
to do otherwise.”
But the fear is there.
“Jill’s the candidate I believe in, but I live in Ohio,” said Ms.
Malanij, who has been chastised online for her advocacy of Ms. Stein.
“So if things are close in the end, I’d have to consider Hillary.”
Magnifying Ms. Malanij’s ambivalence were aspects of the Green
convention itself. “It’s kind of small and disorganized and, honestly,
just weird,” she said. “I’ll put it this way: It’s not exactly the D.N.C.”
To be sure, the weekend featured some eccentricities. On Friday evening,
dozens of Greens clapped and danced (with varying degrees of skill) to a
talent show that featured no shortage of slam poetry and earnest
acoustic guitar. Yvonne Neubert, a supporter from Nashville wearing a
tie-dyed shirt, got the crowd going with a self-written song about
marijuana reform: “I’m Green Party and I’m cannabis proud,” sang Ms.
Neubert, 52. “I wear my pot leaf on my sleeve and my head’s above the
cloud.”
Later, Grey Space, an artist from Portland, Ore., sporting a braided
silver beard and all-black attire, read a series of verses with lines
like “truth trumps troops” and “we are gonna Banksy the big banks, see?”
(Mr. Space declined to provide his age, saying he was conceived in 1969,
but feels like his soul is “much older.”)
On Saturday, Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, called in via Skype
to discuss the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails,
among other topics, but the discussion was hampered by technical
difficulties.
For some, the most disturbing peculiarity of Ms. Stein’s campaign came
when she questioned the process by which vaccines were approved in
remarks on Reddit’s “Ask Me Anything” and to The Washington Post. Her
language echoed some of the arguments of the anti-vaccination movement,
but Ms. Stein also called vaccines “invaluable” and did not oppose their
use. She called the furor over her remarks “the ‘birther’ discussion of
2016.”
Ms. Stein is unlikely to be invited to the presidential debates, which
require candidates to draw at least 15 percent in national polls. The
Libertarian Party’s nominee, Gary Johnson, is attracting more support
than Ms. Stein, though he, too, would need a lift to make the stage.
Given the daunting odds against Ms. Stein winning the presidency, the
Green Party’s biggest practical objective this election may be securing
enough support to guarantee greater ballot access in future races.
But for many Green devotees, the party can triumph, even in defeat, as a
gadfly to the left. “We’re making progress,” Ms. Stein said in an
interview, “whether we win office or simply win the day by pushing
forward a new agenda.”
Soon she waded into a cheering crowd, both hands in peace signs, eager
to convince any doubters that either scenario remains possible.
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