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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    82 months ago

    You are the authority on what you do. You don’t get to ignore the results because you don’t want to take responsibility. You’ve declared your actions, I’ve explained the results.

    Honestly this has gone in a circle long enough. We’re not going to get anywhere if you dont want to provide any kind of evidence/reasoning and basely accuse me of lying. I do appreciate you assisting illustrate a valuable point about how hollow the 3rd party justification is though. Have a nice day!