OK, people, tell me when you last contemplated Jill Stein, perennial Green Party candidate for president.
“Y’all, this is a little spicy, but I have thoughts,” said Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a recent Instagram post criticizing Stein’s third attempt at running for president.
Truly, “a little spicy” and “Green Party candidate Jill Stein” do not often come up in the same sentence. Or paragraph. Or train of thought.
But this is the season when we start to fret a lot about third-party presidential candidates who could divert enough cranky voters from the real options to change the outcome of the election.
We will stop now for a moment to remember the Green Party’s presidential candidate in 2000, Ralph Nader, who drained just enough support from Al Gore in Florida to tip the election to George W. Bush.
Or, um, Jill Stein. Whose presence on the ballot in a few swing states was just enough to keep Hillary Clinton from beating Donald Trump in 2016.
The danger isn’t nearly as great as it was a few months ago, when it looked like the race was going to be Biden-Trump and millions of depressed voters were wondering whether to write in the name of a close friend or, hey, George Clooney.
But still, you can never tell how things might get screwed up, particularly since any outcome not involving the election of Trump is going to lead to months of legal battles and protests.
So feel free to worry about Stein — or other presidential candidates, like Cornel West, whose only major achievement this time around has been not making the ballot in Pennsylvania.
They’re not exactly building a movement, and as Ocasio-Cortez said, if “all you do is show up every four years,” you really ought to be doing something else. Maybe running for a less ridiculous office, the way Ocasio-Cortez did when she knocked off an entrenched and deeply unthrilling House veteran in 2018.
Or sign up for a night-school class. Clean the basement. Reread “War and Peace.” The options are endless. Get a life.
Least condescending lib journalist. Hillary won the popular vote by millions, but you think Jill Stein was the reason she didn't become president? The whole reason you're always talking about swing states is because your system sucks.
I love how the lib op-eds whining about personal voting choices never even mention ending the Electoral College. The whiners treat the fucking thing like it's something from a fantasy novel. This malignant force is unchangeable and it will exist forever.
The default lib response to
”We should improve society somewhat” is 
”That's the way things work, buddy, deal with it”.
If Jill Stein getting fewer votes than there are people living in Philly caused Hillary to lose, Hillary deserved to lose.
This completely inconsequential candidate was the tipping point of the election