Blue Blurs Green

An especially fiery level of hell’s reserved for two types of people; bartenders who mix weak drinks… and bartenders who get into Congress and speak on matters far beyond their expertise when they’d do less harm back at the bar, mixing weak drinks.

Recently Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14^th Congressional) recorded another of her stream-of-consciousness videos on Instagram, this time harping on Dr. Jill Stein and the Green Party. In this video AOC charges Stein with failing to grow the Green Party and calls the Green Party “predatory.” Amusingly, AOC claims certain camaraderie with the Greens in opposition to the duopoly on account of AOC having run as a third-party candidate under the Working Families Party’s banner, when virtually every New Yorker knows the Working Families Party is just a rubber-stamp for the Democrats. Like the proverbial mosquito at the nudist colony, I hardly know where to begin on this one!

Democrats in New York have done their darnedest to exterminate the Green Party by any means at their disposal. As the Greens are philosophically progressive but consistent enough not to compromise on principles, they are competitors to the Democrats in the marketplace of ideas. Despite the Greens having an infinitesimal share of the voter base (0.4% of Democrats’ statewide enrollment in 2020, which is undoubtedly less now), Democrats moved in 2020 to triple the signatures required for the Greens to get on ballot, nearly triple the vote counts needed to remain on ballot, and the coup de grâce, to require these vote counts every two years. This means that even if by some miracle Dr. Jill Stein wins the U.S. presidency in 2024, Democrats in effect force her to abandon the White House after just two years and canvass New York for a gubernatorial candidate (or a Green Party governor in New York forced to hit the national campaign trail after two years to stump for a Green Party presidential candidate). The foreseeable effect of the Democrats demanding successive miracles from New York’s Green Party was its loss of statewide ballot access in 2021.  

Thus AOC’s diatribe against the Green Party for not attracting enough supporters reminds me of Eric Andre’s meme, where he stands in the foreground with a pistol and repeatedly shoots Hannibal Buress seated on an armchair in the background, only then to ask in shock, “Who killed Hannibal?!” If AOC had even a shred of self-awareness, she’d realize that if the Green Party’s not thriving, then maybe she and other New York Democrats should remove their heel from the Green Party’s throat.

Obviously I do not personally endorse many Green Party positions, but wholeheartedly I support the Greens’ right to compete in the marketplace of ideas, which by extension is the public’s right to more and better options on ballot. Democrats cannot truthfully claim to champion diversity and a “level playing field” when they use every trick in the book to eliminate diversity and rig the playing field in foreclosure of the electorate’s choice.