The Green Party's Jill Stein, a good friend of the environment and a better friend of Russia
Who is Jill Stein? Is she a naive environmentalist, Donald Trump's secret weapon or Vladimir Putin's pal?
In November 2016 as the presidential nominee of the left-wing Green Party, Stein picked up 1.1% of the national vote. Those 1.45 million votes in 2016 don't seem like a lot when compared to the 130 million that were cast. But what if Stein, ideologically far closer to Hillary Clinton than to Donald Trump, hadn't run?
Let's take a closer look at the 2016 results. In Michigan, Trump edged Clinton by 11,000 votes, while Stein garnered 51,000. In Wisconsin, Trump beat Clinton by 23,000 votes, while Stein collected 31,000. In Pennsylvania, Trump won by 44,000, while Stein picked up 49,000. If Clinton had won Stein's votes in those three states, she would have won a majority in the Electoral College. Clinton, not Trump, would have been sworn in as president in January 2017. Oh, would a different world it would be.
While all eyes seem to be on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s fumbling, futile, feckless run for the presidency, it's unclear whether his candidacy will hurt Biden or Trump more. Why isn't more attention then being paid to Stein? She might have been the reason Donald Trump won in 2016. She appears to be planning a redo in 2024.
On her website, Stein says she's running this year to “put a pro-worker, anti-war, climate action agenda front and center in this election.” It doesn't look that way. Trump favors cutting taxes for the wealthy, while AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler calls Biden “the most pro-union president in our lifetime.” While Biden is calling for a cease-fire in the Middle East, Trump has told Israel to “get it done. Get it over with and get it over with fast.” Trump has asked oil executives for $1 billion in campaign contributions so he could reverse Biden's clean energy initiatives to cut pollution from coal plants and support a transition to electric vehicles.
Clearly, if policy were Stein's main goal, she would be supporting Biden in 2024 and not running again herself.
Of course, no one who runs for president has a small ego. Stein ran for the presidency on the Green ticket in 2012 and 2016 and is running again in 2024. She may just enjoy the attention, the limelight and the sense only she can set the country moving down the right path.
There's a more nefarious explanation, though. In 2015, Stein dined with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Also at the table was General Michael Flynn, Trump's future national security adviser who was convicted of a felony for lying about his discussions with a Russian diplomat. Stein says she was there to “lift up a different point of view” on U.S. foreign policy. A pro-Russian point of view?
The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired at the time by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, reported that the online propaganda and influence operations conducted by Russia's internet Research Agency during the 2016 campaign promoted Stein: “The IRA's left-leaning accounts focused their efforts on denigrating Clinton and supporting the candidacy of either fellow Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders or Green Party candidate Jill Stein, at the expense of Hillary Clinton.” There were, for example, postings by the IRA aimed at Black voters arguing, “A Vote for Jill Stein is Not a Wasted Vote.”
In her first run for the presidency in 2012, Stein received 0.36% of the vote. Then she hung out with Putin in 2015, received illegal Russian support for her candidacy the next year, and tripled her vote percentage. She did not run in 2020 when Trump was the incumbent, but she is running again while Trump tries to regain office.
Recent polls show that in her third run, Stein is picking up about the same 1% as she did in 2016. She just might well be what Trump needs to win the White House again. Hmm. This brings to mind the remark Ian Fleming's villain Goldfinger made to James Bond: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”
I must admit with some chagrin that Jill Stein and I were college classmates. To the best of my recollection, I did not know her and thus have no special insights into what she is up to. It is clear to me nevertheless that she is doing Russia's work. She is pulling votes away from Biden and enhancing the chances of Trump, again Putin's favored candidate. (How could Trump not be when he's described Russia's invasion of Ukraine as “genius” and invited Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO members who do not spend enough on their military?)
During the Cold War, those in the West who supported Soviet goals for idealistic reasons were known as “useful idiots” by the KGB. One of my favorite novelists, Doris Lessing, visited Russia in 1952. Over half a century later, she recalled, “I was taken around and shown things as a 'useful idiot' … that's what my role was. I can't understand why I was so gullible.”
It took Nobel Prize winner Lessing over 50 years to admit how misguided she was in serving Russian aims. I can only hope Green Party candidate Stein wakes up in the next 50 days.
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