Elections

Third-Party Candidate Wants to Feel The Bern

Bob Eschliman 8:00PM June 22, 2016

Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate, says her campaign has seen a “surge”—both in reach and engagement—because she has refused to allow the political movement that has rallied to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign to be “co-opted” by Democratic Party presidential nominee-in-waiting Hillary Clinton.

As Sanders signals he’s preparing the way to support Hillary, his supporters are less than enthusiastic about the move. They say Clinton epitomizes everything they are fighting against: greed, manipulation, and evil.

So, Stein is openly courting those supporters and urging them to back her campaign. The Greens are now using the hashtag #JillNotHill, and this somewhat recent tweet has been shared more than 6,200 times:

Oh really? So you will be giving back the over $40 million you’ve taken from Wall Street? Talk is cheap, Hillary. https://twitter.com/hillaryclinton/status/741024533059141632 …

“If Bernie endorses Hillary, I urge Bernie’s supporters not to throw in the towel,” she said earlier this month. “Hillary is the antithesis of the revolution.”

In another tweet, the Greens candidate wrote:

While it’s horrifying to hear the draconian things that @realDonaldTrump is talking about, we’ve actually seen @HillaryClinton doing them.

And while the reality is that every Democrat who switches allegiance to the Green Party will hurt Clinton’s chances in the November election, simultaneously helping Donald Trump, Stein has tried to downplay that chatter from the mainstream media. She’s not running to be a “spoiler,” she says, but to “build a people’s party” that can win.

Older Democrats, still left stinging from Ralph Nader’s runs as the Green Party candidate in 2000 and 2004, have generally rejected any calls to defect from the Democratic Party establishment. However, younger voters who don’t have those memories, and who have been backing Sanders in the Democratic primary, are exactly the people Stein is hoping to attract to her own cause.

Here are just a few of the “goodies” she’s cooked into her campaign platform: