By Gail Collins / The New York Times
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 Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., 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 Joe Biden against 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.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times, c.2024.
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