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There are two cases against Dr. Stein. The first, of course, is that she can't win.
medium.com/@cshirky/there…
The second case against Dr. Stein, however, is that the Green Party is a sham. Visit their site, see for yourself. gp.org
What do they do? They fundraise. They campaign. They publish position papers. That's it. They accomplish nothing for the environment.
Behold their electoral record:
The Greens are like a Kickstarter that's always raising money and thanking donors, but never ships a product. "Thanks" *is* their product.
You and three friends could do accomplish everything the Green Party has, armed only with Squarespace and Venmo.
That's coming in 2020; 3rd Parties as the new lulz. Imagine Deez Nutz, but with a travel budget. (Imagine /b/, but with press conferences.)
You could found an Animal Rights party (spokesghost: Harambe) Or 'Taco Trucks Must Also Sell Tamales!' Or 'Crush Our Enemies In Cabo Verde.'
If 100 people are willing to donate $10, you'd have enough to fly to DC and give a speech on banning GMOs, or light sabers, or chillwave.
And the party campaigning to play The Imperial March at Yankees games will not be doing anything different than the Green Party is doing.
Unlike mainstream politics, attention is not the way third parties achieve their goals. Attention IS the goal. There is no other.
It's not just that 3rd party Pres. candidates lose. (Though their track record is 100% failure over two centuries.) They can't afford to win
A third-party candidate who even got close to viability would have to start practicing politics. Off-brand, when you're hawking purity.
If donors cared about politics, they'd try to affect the agenda of one of the viable parties. Politics is what they are donating against.
3rd parties exist to flatter people. We should stop pretending it's a replacement for the boring work & hard compromise of actual elections.
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