“Jill Stein is a useful idiot for Russia. After parroting Kremlin talking points and being propped up by bad actors in 2016 she’s at it again,” DNC spokesman Matt Corridoni said in a statement to The Bulwark. “Jill Stein won’t become president, but her spoiler candidacy—that both the GOP and Putin have previously shown interest in—can help decide who wins. A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump.”
That’s because third parties only show up every 4 years to play useful idiot.
We’d hear about them more if they’d run in smaller elections - elections they might actually have a fighting chance at winning. Having some political foothold might be helpful if they’re going to participate in larger elections where the two-party dichotomy is hardest to overcome.
But that’s not how it works. They exist, fundamentally, to be a threat to one party or the other. That’s what their donors pay them to do. Nobody is paying them to be a threat to both parties, because nobody legitimately believes that the American Green Party actually has a platform. People usually vote for them out of spite because they think the Democratic nominee is too weak. Likewise the Libertarian Party caters to right-wingers who think the Republican nominee is too government-y for them.
Or even if they showed up outside of an electoral context. The green party has some local elected officials in a few places across the country, none of them very close to me so it’s hard to inform an impression of them.
But it doesn’t seem like, at least outside of those few folks, that the green party is very interested in any aspects of politics besides running in elections. If Jill Stein was criticizing Biden or Harris for the last four years, trying to get them to move to the left, or organizing groups of people to accomplish anything other than voting every 4 years… Her rhetoric points towards making real systemic change, but her actions suggest someone only invested in being a presidential candidate within the status quo. And the green party keeps nominating her for some reason. That doesn’t seem like what a serious party or candidate would do, or should be doing.
Sounds like that’s the idea you got of third party from the propaganda, because they talk about them exactly when they become a threat and not the rest of the time. Government and a bunch of rich guys own all mass media.