I wonder if elections around the world always feel like Groundhog Day, or if it’s something special in the United States. If you thought 2024 would be a repeat of 2020, now that it’s Trump vs. Harris and not Trump vs. Biden, we’ve been dragged back to the horrors of 2016. Part of that repeat effect is the Jill Stein’s Green Party campaign.

When Hillary Clinton lost, liberal politicians and commentators suffered that loss in everything but the candidate they chose and the platform on which they ran. They blamed voters who wanted Bernie Sanders, a candidate and campaign that arguably changed the litmus on what progressive policies could be incorporated into a presidential election. Even more vitriol was in store for those who voted for Stein as a protest vote after Sanders conceded to Clinton; clinton actually Stein shouted in her 2017 memoir.

This time there is several parts floating around he Internet preemptively blame third-party candidates and voters interested in them for the Democrats’ potential loss, calling them a de facto vote for Trump. The Democrats, who they had previously largely ignored SteinThey have come out swinging, posting ads calling her a “spoiler””, showing that they are threatened by the potential margins they fear she could tilt in swing states. He Washington Post reported last week that Stein’s campaign is receiving funding from a PAC tied to the Republican Party, suggesting they believe it could work in their favor as well. (I will note here that wapo Amazon owner Jeff Bezos decided the publication would not support the election, leading to legitimate concern that Bezos is trying to pave the way in favor of a more corporate-friendly administration under Trump, which he denies).

These speeches about Stein don’t really delve into his politics at all; Fair enough, given that he has no chance in hell of becoming president. She has never held a position, beyond a local position in Massachusetts more than a decade ago, and his record is of consistently losing elections and then doing little more than preparing to run again. (Stein took a break from being the Green Party candidate in the 2020 election, which, as you may recall, had a 20-person Democratic primary.) Slate’s David Faris He maintains: “The Green Party is not a particularly serious political operation. Their candidates have never won a federal election, and their dwindling number of successful candidates have mostly been at the municipal or state legislative level.”