Thinking of Casting Your Ballot for Jill Stein? You May Be Playing the Sucker in the Right-Wing Supreme Court’s Long Game

Voting for the Green Party in 2000 gave us a rightist Supreme Court that's still with us – a court that terminated abortion rights, gave us Citizens United and invented gun “rights.” They’re not done.

Gage Skidmore (cc-atrib)

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is on the ballot in six of seven battleground states, denouncing the “bipartisan endless war machine,” excoriating Kamala Harris for backing Israel’s war on Gaza, and telling voters Harris deserves to lose to Trump.

Progressive activist Cornel West is also on the ballot in three of those states, condemning Harris as “a war criminal” for complicity in genocide in Gaza.

Progressives, young people, Arab Americans, many voters of color and non-Zionist Jews – including me – are enraged at Kamala Harris’s support for the Biden’s administration’s policy enabling Israeli genocide. And in response many are turning to the Green Party.

I am not one of them.

As the election looms – and as we see the disturbing level of popular support enjoyed by Donald Trump – we face a difficult choice: cast a ballot for Harris anyway or vote for someone who cannot win but shares our abhorrence of U.S. policy on Gaza and Israel?

As a supporter of Palestinian rights who cannot abide another Trump presidency, I am going to vote for Kamala Harris. Why? Because a decision to sit out the election or – what amounts to the same thing – vote for Jill Stein or Cornell West, could deliver the death stroke for American democracy, and make things even worse for the people of Gaza.

Supporting the people of Gaza is imperative. But voting for the Green Party or Cornell West is not a way to support them, because no one thinks Stein will win and no one should think Trump would be any better on Gaza.

Importantly, Gaza is not the sole issue before the American people. Stein and West ignore the brutal reality that punishing Harris by helping elect Donald Trump will do nothing for Palestinian survival, and that electing Trump would be a catastrophe — a catastrophe that could on for a long, long time since the Supreme Court is now as big a danger to our democracy as Donald Trump.

A Trump victory would be a calamity for the eleven million immigrants Trump means to deport – a calamity for everyone on a planet Earth impacted by climate change – a calamity for the people of color Trump demonizes, degrades and disenfranchises – a calamity for women entitled to control their own bodies and fates – a calamity for those who rely on the social safety net – a calamity for Jews fearful of the rising power of antisemites befriended by Donald Trump – a calamity for activists and public officials targeted by MAGA threats and violence – and a calamity for our fragile and imperfect constitutional democracy.

There is also the long run.

The right-wing justices and Donald Trump

Right-wingers hold a 6-3 super-majority on the Supreme Court, and they’ve been on a tear, ending abortion rights, striking down gun regulations, dismissing charges against January 6 insurrectionists, inventing presidential immunity for Trump, and second-guessing and hobbling expert regulatory agencies.

The long-term project of the right-wing justices is to dismantle the modern protective state, using their judicial veto to thwart administrative agencies and prevent government from regulating the super-corporations that put profits above all else. And the reactionary justices believe Trump can extend their judicial despotism for another generation if he is re-elected.

The obvious reality is this: Trump must be stopped. And only Harris can stop him.

If you have trouble voting for Vice President Harris because of Gaza, you need to change the way you think about voting. Voting is an act that moves the needle in one direction or the other. Voting is not speech. It is action. And the act of stopping Trump is urgent.

To appreciate why we need to shift our view on voting, think about what happened in year 2000.  Many progressives made the wrong choices about the Green Party 24 years ago, and the bitter fruits of those decisions continue to poison us decades later.

The pivotal election of 2000 led to the termination of abortion rights, the deification of firearms, whittling away of voting rights, and stagnation on climate change

Perhaps the year 2000 election seems like ancient history to many American voters, who either had not yet been born or were under ten years old in 2000. But the Supreme Court’s reshaping of what we once thought were our fundamental rights was determined in that fateful election.

Here's how it happened.

Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush fought for the presidency. The Green Party candidate Ralph Nader was also on the ballot, and he decried voting for the “lesser of two evils.” Nader called Gore and Bush “Tweedledee and Tweedledum.” “They look and act the same,” said Nader, “so it doesn't matter which you get.”

The election was a cliff-hanger, and the outcome turned on who won the state of Florida. A recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court sought to straighten out the mess caused by confusing ballot forms and defective voting devices. But Bush sued in federal court, and the U.S. Supreme Court intervened. Five conservative Supreme Court justices froze the Florida vote count at a point when Bush was 537 votes ahead, thereby handing the presidency to Bush.

Ralph Nader’s role – and responsibility – for the 2000 outcome

The Supreme Court’s right-wingers would not have had a chance to steal the election for Bush had Ralph Nader not been on the ballot.

Bush won by only 537 votes. But Nader got 97,488 votes in Florida. In Nader’s book, Crashing the Party, Nader pointed to polling which showed that if he had not run, 38% of those who voted for him would have voted for Gore, 25% for Bush, and the rest would not have voted at all. By Nader’s own reckoning, then, Gore would have gained over 12,600 more votes than Bush had Nader not been on the ballot, and Gore would have won an unquestionable victory.

Although Greens have subsequently attempted to evade the fact that Nader was a “spoiler” for the Democrats, it’s hard to see why they are squirming over the issue. Didn’t Nader assure voters that Gore and Bush “look and act the same, so it doesn't matter which you get”? Just as Stein chooses to see no difference between Harris and Trump, notwithstanding issues like immigration, climate change, and free elections.

The World the Green Party Gave Us

George W. Bush returned the U.S. Supreme Court’s favor in selecting him as president, by appointing two right-wing judges to the Supreme Court, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. 

Look at what life would have been like in twenty-first century America had Al Gore been elected and appointed two liberals instead!

• Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade and destroyed women’s constitutional right to abortion by a six-to-three vote. Had the Supreme Court included two Gore-appointed liberals in place of Roberts and Alito, the vote would have been five-four to maintain abortion rights.

• Citizens United unleashed corporate money in politics, and was also decided by a five-four majority. Roberts’ and Alito’s votes were also needed for that decision

• Likewise District of Columbia v. Heller, which conjured a personal right to own guns. It was decided by five justices including Roberts and Alioto.

• A five-four decision in Shelby County v. Holder eviscerated the Voting Rights Act and loosed a tsunami of G.O.P. voter suppression laws. Same result. Had there been two Gore-appointed liberals on the court instead of Bush-appointed Roberts and Alito, voting rights would have gone on being protected.

By the end of the Trump presidency, the right-wing majority had swollen to six, but still the two Bush-appointed justices remained the key to remaining the majority.

During the current Supreme Court term, the two supplied the necessary votes for the Supreme Court majorities that: bestowed immunity on Donald Trump, prevented the Environmental Protection Agency from protecting people from air pollution that drifts across state lines, allowed the sale of devices to turn semi-automatic rifles into machine guns, and ruled that conservative judges, in the end, must be the ones who decide complex issues of regulatory power – including climate change, food and drug safety, clean air and water standards – rather than expert government agencies authorized by Congress.

Every single decision would have gone the other way had Al Gore won the presidency and appointed two liberals justices. Which is to say, had the Green Party not run a candidate for president in 2000. Ralph Nader enabled the right-wing justices to maintain their long-enduring majority on the Supreme Court.

The right-wing justices’ long game: protecting their majority for another generation

Why does this matter now? Clarence Thomas is 76 years old, and Samuel Alito, 74. If Harris were elected, she might well have the opportunity to replace them, transforming the current 6-3 conservative majority into a 5-4 liberal majority. If, on the other hand, Trump were re-elected, the two would likely retire, allowing Trump to replace them with right-wing judges in their forties. That would cement the right-wing hold on the judiciary for a generation to come.

The right-wingers on the Supreme Court are playing a long game. Whether or not they truly admire the would-be dictator Trump or feel his methods are desirable, they have been prepared to remove obstacles – like criminal law and voting rights – that might stand in the way of his possible victory. Their goal: an America in which the rich and their corporations are supreme, dominating government and politics, the executive branch wields unconstrained power, regulatory power is diminished, the social and economic sway of white people and their de facto supremacy are not subject to interference or challenge – and the Supreme Court commands sufficient authority to police institutions that challenge the right-wing vision. 

Depending on how close the election is, the rightist justices might have another opportunity to intervene on the Republican side. And as in year 2000, the Green Party might give them a helping hand by making it a closer election. 

If this isn’t bad enough, look at the further consequences of George W. Bush’s Green-Party-enabled year 2000 victory

• The war in Iraq. Invading Iraq had long been a project of neocon right-wingers, eager to show American power after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At newly-installed President George W. Bush’s first National Security Council meeting, eight months before 9/11, Bush and the neocons around him were already discussing how to attack Iraq.  

September 11 provided the excuse. Had Gore been elected, the United States would never have invaded Iraq. Three trillion dollars of American treasure. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian lives. And 4,598 American lives. Another of the Green Party’s year 2000 legacies.

• Climate change. America could have had a president in 2001, Al Gore, who grasped the danger of climate change, one of the first political leaders to recognize the depth of the threat to humanity. We could have jump-started our response to the crisis. Instead, we had the pro-oil Bush presidency, initiating nearly two decades of political stagnation on the emerging disaster.

Many Green Party voters felt they were making a difference – and they did. But it was the opposite of what most of them would likely have desired.

What purpose is served by voting for the Green Party?

We have paid a steep price for the Green Party’s presidential election efforts. A G.O.P. victory in 2000. Possibly Trump’s 2016 victory as well. But Green Party advocates assert we need to end the “two party duopoly,” suggesting that the Greens hope someday to become a major party. Let’s see how that theory has played out since 2000.

This is the Green Party’s percentage of the popular vote for President for every presidential election of this century:

                        2000                2.74%

                        2004                0.38%

                        2008                0.10%

                        2012                0.36%

                        2016                1.07%

                        2020                0.26%

The Greens have been working at it for more than twenty years, and there’s no progression toward the Green Party playing a significant role in American politics. Other than as a spoiler.

Jill Stein appears to revel in the prospect of denying Kamala Harris victory. She notes the substantial support she is receiving from voters of Middle Eastern descent and exults that third party voting will erase Democrats’ margin of victory in four battleground states unless Harris ends her support for Israel.

But if Harris refuses to do so, Stein’s “success” simply means Trump will win. Voting for her would punish the Democrats for supporting Israel’s war on the people of Gaza. But Harris’s loss would improve nothing for the beleaguered people of Gaza. And millions of Americans and millions of undocumented immigrants would also be punished.

Gaza and the meaning of voting

Israel has annihilated the institutions and infrastructure that made Gaza a society – public schools, hospitals, places of worship, universities, housing, farms, the agencies that distribute food to the needy, utilities, water supplies.

Israel’s relentless bombing and shelling have killed and wounded well over 138,000 Palestinians, and Israel is inflicting a famine on Gaza, using starvation as a weapon of war.

Kamala Harris’s continuing support for Israel’s war on the people of Gaza is despicable. Nonetheless, Trump and his MAGA G.O.P. have become a fascist enterprise that poses a giant threat to America, and he must be stopped.

Refusing to vote for Harris misunderstands the meaning of voting. There is nothing on the ballot next to Kamala Harris’s name that says, “By checking here, I express my approval of all Kamala Harris has done, affirm that I share her values, and convey my deep admiration for her.”  

Voting does not mean any of these things. Voting is not speech. It is action, action that advances one candidate over another, makes one state of affairs more likely than another. Voting means playing a role in a collective decision that one candidate will win and another will lose. Its meaning is not personal expression but what one political leader may do that the other opposes.

If Harris gets my vote it does not mean I approve of her acts or her statements on Gaza. It only means I think our country, our way of life, and the future of Gazans, too, will likely be better if Harris holds that position of power than if Donald Trump does.

As everyone knows, on November 5, either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will be elected president. One or the other, no one else. No one can argue with a straight face that it doesn’t matter which.

Who is elected will matter to the Palestinians of Gaza, who would very likely be even worse off if Donald Trump were elected. Trump, who opposes any Palestinian state coming into being, and who, as president, suspended U.S. opposition to West Bank settlements. Trump, who says ”Israel has to do what they have to do,” Trump, who urged Israel to “finish up” its offensive in Rafah and “get this over” fast.

Trump, whose son-in-law and designated Middle East “expert” Jared Kushner is looking forward to a Palestinian-free Gaza, already relishing the real estate possibilities. “Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable,” Kushner observed. Particularly if Israel “moved the people out” and “cleaned it up.” Trump himself envisions Gaza as a luxury resort, “better than Monaco.”

Trump threatens to arrest and deport pro-Palestinian protestors, and he opposes calls for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. He promises to reinstate his anti-Muslim travel ban.

We can attempt to pressure a President Harris on Israel and Palestine, as the Democratic Party’s Congressional Progressive Cause is attempting to do. Or we can have a President Trump who destroys our Constitution and our democracy in a maelstrom of political violence, misogynist aggression, mass deportation, racism and antisemitism, accelerating inequality, nepotistic corruption, and plutocratic fascism.

This is no time for watching the actual election struggle from the sidelines. Even if you consider Kamala Harris to be complicit in genocide, even while we battle against the administration’s support for Israel’s cruel and calamitous war on the people of Gaza, we must select the Harris box on our ballots. For the sake of our children and grandchildren. For the sake of humanity. For the sake of decency.