{"id":298964,"date":"2017-03-14T14:30:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T13:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/democrats-mccarthyism-hits-greens-stein\/"},"modified":"2017-03-14T14:30:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T13:30:15","slug":"democrats-mccarthyism-hits-greens-stein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/democrats-mccarthyism-hits-greens-stein\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats\u2019 McCarthyism Hits Greens\u2019 Stein"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Democratic Party hysteria blaming Russia for Hillary Clinton\u2019s defeat has spilled over into McCarthyistic smears against Green Party candidate Jill Stein for attending a dinner in Moscow, reports Nat Parry.<\/p>\n<p>By Nat Parry<\/p>\n<p>Four months since the upset election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, one of the primary scapegoats of the Democrats for its stunning electoral failure remains the Green Party and its 2016 presidential nominee, Jill Stein.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2016\/12\/02\/jill-stein-spoiled-the-2016-election-for-hillary-clinton\/\">Pointing<\/a> to final vote tallies in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan that showed Trump\u2019s margin of victory as being below the total vote count for Stein, Democrats have coalesced around the conventional wisdom that Stein voters flipped the election by failing to unite behind the Democratic nominee.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_22891\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/stein-putin-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/stein-putin-1-300x200.jpg\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-22891\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/stein-putin-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/stein-putin-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/stein-putin-1.jpg 422w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-22891\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/stein-putin-1-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/stein-putin-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/stein-putin-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/stein-putin-1.jpg 422w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jill Stein attending a dinner marking the RT network\u2019s 10-year anniversary in Moscow, December 2015, sitting at the same table as Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>As Matthew Rozsa <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2016\/12\/02\/jill-stein-spoiled-the-2016-election-for-hillary-clinton\/\">explains<\/a> the thinking at Salon, \u201cif the Stein voters in those three states had all supported Clinton instead of Trump, the Republican candidate would have only received 260 electoral votes \u2013 10 shy of the minimum necessary to become president.\u201d So there you have it. Stein spoiled the election. Case closed.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with this analysis is its\u00a0flawed logic that anyone\u2019s votes actually \u201cbelong\u201d to anyone else, and further, it rests on the false assumption that all of Stein\u2019s voters would have naturally voted for Clinton had the Green Party not been competing in the election.<\/p>\n<p>The fact is, many of these voters were turned off by Clinton\u2019s hawkishness, perceived ethical lapses and close Wall Street ties, and would have never voted for her regardless of whether there was a third party alternative or not. Some would have stayed home, and others might have\u00a0actually voted for Trump.<\/p>\n<p>The suggestion that smaller parties don\u2019t have a right to compete is also deeply anti-democratic and flies in the face of <a href=\"https:\/\/compliancecampaign.wordpress.com\/category\/election-related-commitments\/\">international standards<\/a> for free and fair elections. Although Democrats rarely come out and openly state their desire for the Green Party to cease to exist, they do pointedly take issue with Green candidates competing in&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/03\/09\/democrats-mccarthyism-hits-greens-stein\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Democratic Party hysteria blaming Russia for Hillary Clinton\u2019s defeat has spilled over into McCarthyistic smears against Green Party candidate Jill Stein for attending a dinner in Moscow, reports Nat Parry. By Nat Parry Four months since the upset election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, one of the primary scapegoats of the Democrats for its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-298964","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}