Self-defeating progressive infighting

Both AOC and Jill Stein demonstrate a lack of progressive leadership. We need to do better.

I hope people enjoyed our interview with Matt Duss, the first of Cutting Through’s ongoing series of interviews. More to come! If you missed it, you can see it here or you can watch it on YouTube here.

Subscriptions sustain this work, so if you have the means and motivation to become a paid subscriber, it will help me continue to not only produce this material, but to expand to video, interviews with prominent figures in policy and academia, and more. If not, just spread the word, that helps just as much!

To become a free or paid subscriber, just click this button.

You can also support this site with a one-time donation, rather than—or in addition to—a subscription, through CashApp, by clicking this button.

To share this newsletter with your friends, just click this button.

---

There was an ugly exchange this month between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Green Party leader and presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein. It is exactly the sort of political spectacle progressives really don’t need, especially now, and yet one that seems inevitable in a system where two parties dominate and dissatisfaction with them is seen as a threat even by many who agree with that dissatisfaction.

The political food fight between the two might seem to have started when AOC put out a video attacking the Green Party and Stein. Her attack was motivated by the negative reaction to the statement she made at the Democratic National Convention where she repeated the misleading mantra that President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their team were working, as we have heard so many times, “around the clock” to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Stein has, since that time, fueled backlash against AOC, reducing everything she stands for to her inarguably awful statement at the DNC. Most importantly, as Stein is positioning herself as someone voters should turn to instead of Kamala Harris as an alternative to voting for genocide (Harris) or autocracy (Donald Trump), she is conveniently ignoring the legitimate criticisms AOC made about Stein and the Greens.

In fact, AOC’s substantive criticism of the Green Party and Stein was spot-on, if needlessly insulting and confrontational. I have made the same critiques, and there has been no change in the Greens’ behavior for years.

The Green Party runs candidates for high-profile offices like President, the Senate, governors and the like, which always lose non-competitively. Green members get the endorsement of their party for some local races, but few resources are deployed and the victories they do secure are often, though not always, in uncontested races.

So when AOC says the Greens don’t do the hard work of building a party from the ground up, she’s right. Unfortunately, rather than offer a constructive critique, as a progressive leader should, AOC decided instead to punch left, and in so doing, turned up the already too-high volume on tensions between center-left and left wing Democrats and Independents who need to come together not only to fight against Donald Trump, but also to pull American politics in a more progressive, people- and human rights-oriented direction.

Neither of those things are going to happen through Democrats beating back the Greens (and other third parties) nor will it come about in some far off time when the Greens can beat out the democrats. It will come about as the Greens and progressive Democrats, along with progressive Independents, work in concert to either radically transform the Democratic party or to build a truly viable third party.

No matter how progressives move forward, we need string leadership committed to building the alliances and coalitions we need to succeed. Both AOC and Stein have, in this episode, shown themselves to be poor leaders, regardless of their individual political views.

The quieting of AOC

Stein’s referring to AOC as “AOC-Pelosi” was petty, but not entirely without basis. AOC came into Congress as a challenger of the status quo and, while she certainly remains among the most progressive members of Congress, she is less confrontational with fellow Democrats than she once was or than other “Squad” members still are. She seems, to my eyes, to have adopted a strategy of trying to build some cache within the party in the hope that this would strengthen her ability to move her agenda forward.

She’s not the first to try that strategy, but if it works, she’ll be the first to succeed at it. Politics are seductive, and one of the ways people are seduced is by tempting them into a “get along to move ahead” path. The trouble is, “getting along” requires so many compromises that it becomes an end to itself, and the longer-term goals are not attainable while still maintaining the power base that the politician established.  

Rather than try to dissuade AOC, more progressive voices tend to shame her, just as Stein did here. True, Stein was responding to an attack, but good leaders don’t react in that manner, and Stein is not a good leader. Good leaders, in fact, do what AOC said: they build a grassroots following strategically, mapping out the path to their goals, planning tactics under that strategy, and taking individual actions guided by those tactical decisions.

I’ve been following the Greens closely, with no small amount of hope, for decades. After an initial growth phase, they have stagnated for a long time because they focus on high-profile campaigns and do not plan for growth and victory in a strategic manner. Or, where they have tried, they have not executed and consistently pursued those strategies.

Needless and destructive language

AOC could have advanced the progressive cause by trying to address those issues in a productive way that brought Greens and other, smaller, third party supporters in to work with the most progressive of Democrats. Instead, she called Stein and the Greens “predatory.” That choice of words was clearly intentional, as AOC dove deep into it, and it has some concerning implications.

AOC’s accusation of “predatory” behavior by Stein and the Greens has the whiff of some of the whispers that have been making the social media rounds over the past month or so that Stein and the Greens are “Russian agents.”

Indeed, the Democrats’ own web site ran a story earlier this month about Stein campaigning with the Uhuru 3, Black rights activists who, just this week, were acquitted of acting as Russian agents, although they were convicted of conspiring to do so. The Uhuru Movement—led by the African People's Socialist Party, whose chairman, Omali Yeshitela was one of the Uhuru 3—is a half-century old, Black socialist and Pan-African movement.

Whatever one thinks of Uhuru or the APSP, they are a symbol of radical anti-racist activism. Their indictment, trial, and acquittal on charges of actually acting in concert with Russia (they were convicted of conspiring to work with Russia) raise a lot of questions about free speech and political activism, but standing with them in the face of their indictment is hardly evidence of supporting Russia, as the Democrats’ web page tries to imply.

That’s not to say there are not reasons for concern about some of Stein’s policies. In an interview with Mehdi Hasan on his Zeteo network, Stein hedged at calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal. She has also fallen back on a tired excuse for her past defense (I would not call it support, per se) of Bashar al-Asad’s mass murder in Syria, claiming it was an “unauthorized” message posted on her web site. She has also ascribed some rather bizarre motivations to the foreign intervention in Syria that would make no sense to anyone at all familiar with the region.

In general, Stein’s grasp of policy, how government works, and foreign affairs beyond general slogans is suspect to say the least. But that doesn’t make her a “Russian agent,” nor does it make her campaign “predatory.”

Stein’s candidacy is described as “predatory” because of the narrow margin between Trump and Harris, but this too, is an anti-democratic way of thinking, as well as being ill-founded factually. It’s ill-founded because it assumes that Stein voters would all vote for Harris if three was no option aside from the two major parties. But it’s not true. Some of the Stein voters would vote for Trump, and a great many would not vote at all. The argument (which Mehdi also echoed) that we know Stein cost a Democrat in this or that swing state because her vote total exceeds Trump’s margin of victory is fallacious and non-scientific. There were many factors in Clinton’s loss. Most of them were structural or self-inflicted.

In any case, the entire argument is based on a faulty and anti-democratic premise. Voters do not owe their votes to a candidate. A candidate must win—they must earn—the people’s votes.

Acting for democracy

Forgetting about the intellectual argument at hand here, it is simply a pragmatic point. Shaming people for their vote is not going to get them to change and vote the way you want them to. On the contrary, they will dig in and make it much harder to reach them with more reasonable appeals. That Democrats and many Democratic loyalists didn’t learn that lesson from 2016 is unfortunate, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

We need also to keep in mind that individual voters use different calculations. Frequently, Harris voters are not really Harris voters, nor were they Biden voters before. Many, quite likely most of them are anti-Trump voters.

That is a terrible basis for democratic politics. Harris has been slow to discuss policy and vague when she does. The thrust of her campaign, in fact, is anti-Trump. That’s her best strategy, but that very fact speaks to how little most people expect her to deliver. The lesser of two evils is inherently anti-democratic, because it does not give people the option of policies they want.

Many voters can’t justify a vote for Harris, even if they know Trump is worse

For many progressives, the incremental, temporary, or miniscule progress that Joe Biden made with his signature pieces of legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act, American Rescue Plan, CHIPS Act and similar bills was the result of terrible policy from both parties for decades that was exposed by the covid crisis and the George Floyd uprising. Biden delivered just enough to take the wind out of progressive sails without doing anything to address the fundamental issues that the proverbial 99% continue to grapple with.

The price for that minor progress has been full American partnership in the genocide in Gaza, the destabilization of the Middle East, increasing global militarism and tensions, and ongoing frustration for most people, contributing to the growth of the far-right at home and abroad. Too many anti-Trump voters can’t bring themselves to vote for someone who perpetuates such things as Kamala Harris promises to do.

That’s the crisis third parties are speaking to, whether it’s the Greens or any other. And disaster waits for all of us if the progressive Democrats like AOC don’t listen.

When AOC reinforced the blatant falsehood about the Biden administration “working around the clock” for a ceasefire in Gaza when the slaughter there can only continue for even a matter of days because of a literal tidal wave of weapons the United States continues to pour into Israel, she is paying too high a price for her political aspirations, even if those aspirations are not entirely selfish.

On the other hand, Jill Stein does us no favors by blindly pushing forward with attacks on the Democrats that don’t account for the danger represented by MAGA Republicans, who have been correctly described as a death cult.

Whether it’s the Green Party or some other, new leadership is needed in alternative parties. That leadership needs to be informed, and it needs to have a real strategy. No alternative party is going to make a positive impact by running for president, senator, and similar high-profile offices without the legislative base in municipalities, cities, states, and, eventually Congress. Jill Stein and the Greens haven’t learned that.

Democrats are not going to solve the problems we face as long as they are part of the political system that cannot escape the need for big money. Nor can they solve these problems as long as they are invested in maintaining the same failed system that both parties have fought to maintain.

The two-party system is one thing that can be changed without having to fundamentally depend on the courts, the Congress, or changing the Constitution. The Greens are absolutely right in challenging this system. And they have many good ideas, which, as Jill Stein herself pointed out to Mehdi Hasan, the Democrats have sometimes even co-opted.

What’s needed is leadership that tries to come together, build the strategy to capitalize on the popular policies for change that are so widely supported. Let’s move past the self-interested and petty back-biting AOC and Jill Stein have been demonstrating.

---

My Latest Articles

The genocide in Gaza is as American as it is Israeli. The U.S. won’t stop it.

Israel’s lie over the murder of U.S. activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has been exposed, and in the process, so has Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s double standard on the worth of Palestinian lives.

Mondoweiss, September 6, 2024

Israel’s lie about a U.S. activist’s murder has exposed the Biden-Harris double standard on Palestine

Israel’s lie over the murder of U.S. activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has been exposed, and in the process, so has Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s double standard on the worth of Palestinian lives.

Mondoweiss, September 12, 2024

---

News Roundup

Lebanon: Hundreds of Hezbollah members wounded after pagers explode

By Nader Durgham, Middle East Eye, September 17, 2024

Why did a British Jewish newspaper publish fake Israeli intelligence?

By Ben Reiff, +972 Magazine, September 11, 2024

Starvation and the right to food, with an emphasis on the Palestinian people’s food sovereignty

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, United Nations, July 17, 2024

Sudan suspended from the African Union

African Union, September 17, 2024

Israel is joining the first global AI convention, here’s why that’s dangerous

By Mona Shtaya, Mondoweiss, September 16, 2024

Iran's Pezeshkian says 'no place for hostility' with Saudi Arabia, ready to visit Riyadh

By Rosaleen Carroll, Al-Monitor, September 16, 2024