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People who are close to Green Party candidate Jill Stein are begging her to drop her campaign lest she elect Donald Trump and end democracy in America. They are aware that the number of votes she got in 2016 in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania exceeded Trump's margin in each of those states. If she had dropped out and endorsed Hillary Clinton in order to stop the menace of Trump, Clinton might have won. Then Clinton, not Trump, would have nominated three Supreme Court justices, taken the pandemic more seriously, and done quite a few other things the Stein voters cared about. So with the election a coin toss now, will Stein drop out and endorse Kamala Harris?
Well, no. That is despite her own family strongly urging her to do so now. One of her adult sons recently told a reporter that early this year her own family asked her not to run for fear of electing someone she abhors. She ignored them all. To make it worse, her campaign is not focused on all the great things she would do as president, like raise the minimum wage, implement the Green New Deal, make healthcare more affordable, etc. Instead, it is focused on hammering Harris for the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, as if Harris had some control over Joe Biden's foreign policy. Stein's attacks on Israel are so unrelenting that she managed to get white supremacist and former KKK wizard David Duke to temporarily shelve his virulent antisemitism and endorse Stein, who is Jewish. What he likes about her are her constant attacks on Israel. Stein has rejected his endorsement.
But her rejection may not have much of an effect. A recent poll from Noble Predictive Insights shows that Stein may be hurting Trump more than she is hurting Harris. The company, founded by Mike Noble, hired David Byler, who used to be The Washington Post's answer to The New York Times' Nate Cohn, as chief researcher and seems to be a neutral pollster. When voters were asked if they preferred Harris to Trump, it was Harris 49%, Trump 47%. But when Stein was added to the mix, it became Harris 49%, Trump 46%. This suggests that Stein is pulling more support from Trump than from Harris. Of course, this is only one poll and national polls don't really count, but it is still noteworthy because it contradicts the conventional wisdom that Stein hurts Harris the most.
How come? It is not due to Duke's endorsement, because that came after the poll, although that could cement Stein's support from antisemites. Maybe it is because some Trump supporters don't like either Harris or Trump on Israel (both support Israel), and Stein is full-throated against Israel. Or maybe they are pro-Putin and Trump isn't sufficiently Putiny (Putinish?). Stein famously dined with Putin in 2015 and in 2024 defended him and refused to call him a war criminal for invading Ukraine. (V)