Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and perennial Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein traded barbs recently on social media. Ocasio-Cortez attacked Stein for allegedly weakening the Democratic Party and suggesting her repeated runs over the years were “predatory” in a post dated Sunday, Sept 1. She also highlighted the lack of growth of the Green party.
Stein was slammed for “stealing votes” from the Democrats in 2016 in several key states after it was revealed that her total count was larger than the margin of victory for Trump. This logic is often fuzzy and presumes that all the voters in question would vote for the next-closest candidate while many individual voters feel strongly about their third-party candidate.
Regardless, Stein caught a lot of flak in 2016 after Hillary Clinton’s unexpected loss. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin all had a margin of victory for Trump which was less than the total of Stein votes. Stein’s antiwar policies and criticism of the establishment earned her status as an outsider years before she “spoiled” the 2016 election, however.
Ocasio-Cortez slammed Stein for a failure to achieve office while she’s the ostensible leader of the Green Party. Thus far, Green Party candidates have been unable to get elected to federal positions since becoming an official party in 2001.
She was responding to a question from a commenter and suggested that the lack of party growth as well as failure to hold offices suggests that there’s a problem with leadership. She also called Stein’s repeated runs “predatory,” while ignoring the fact that Stein didn’t run in 2020, Howie Hawkins was the candidate in that cycle.
Stein is running again in the 2024 cycle and will be on the ballot in a number of states.
Despite Ocasio-Cortez’s claims, the Green party held 144 offices in 20 states in early 2024.
Greens responded by reversing the accusation and highlighting the predatory nature of the Democratic Party. One commenter highlighted Democratic attempts to deny ballot access to Green candidates, while another jabbed at the Democrats failure to achieve a ceasefire in the Israeli-Hamas war.
For example, on Sept 2 a Wisconsin Supreme Court judge denied an attempt to ban Stein from the ballot which was brought by the Democratic National Committee.
