This is one post in a series looking at the various third-party candidates. For a summary, please see here
Jill Stein’s positions overall appear to be rather unrealistic given that, if elected, she would have to work with a Congress that is vastly more mainstream and conservative than the Green Party. It is almost as if they have usurped the most progressive of progressive positions and added the rather unrealistic goal of making alternative energy our nation’s mainstay. Indeed, it might be more fair to characterize her platform as ‘socialist’ rather than ‘progressive’. On the whole I like the drift of the platform, but I find it exceedingly unrealistic and not just for sociopolitical reasons. While I will discuss elements of her platform below, overall I would say that I would expect her to be unable to reach accommodations with Congress and likely would get nothing of consequence done (Obama got _exactly_ what he wanted done, all blather to the contrary).
I like the positions on the environment: she wants to bolster the EPA, promote conservation and recycling and minimize our current energy use. I agree that lots of jobs are there to be had by working to make our energy/environment infrastructure a lot more sustainable and long-term. I also believe that many of these approaches will pay for society’s investment many times over. However, the idea of eliminating coal and nuclear power plants while “Build[ing] a nationwide smart electricity grid that can pool and store power from a diversity of renewable sources, giving the nation clean, democratically-controlled, terrorist-proof energy.” tells me that she (presuming she fully supports the party platform, something I am assuming to be the case) is totally unrealistic about what is possible or likely even feasible given the constraints of physics (see Do The Math for details if you are curious).
The idea of cutting the military by 50% (really, I think we could go to 90% cuts and lose none of our defensive ability (and realistically, very little of our offensive ability either)) makes a lot of sense, as does getting out of Iran and Afghanistan, but then the platform calls for “Create a nuclear free zone in the Middle East region and require all nations in area to join.” How the hell can we do that if we have no military presence? So progressive in all other military/foreign policy issues, but then wants to go around forcing sovereign governments to give up the only tool to help balance the US’s massive military advantage (not to mention a counterweight to Israel’s well known, but denied nuclear weapon program).
I used to consider the idea of abolishing the electoral college system, but haven’t for a long time. To me the idea of going with a popular vote system is not only totally unrealistic (it would take a Constitutional Amendment, what chance of getting the small states to say yes?), but is counter productive with the intent of making votes count. To me this sort of pie in the sky idea speaks volumes toward how realistically Ms. Stein would govern, and not in a good way. Granted party platforms are more about wishful thinking than anything else, but still, the platform seems likely to trigger so much resistance that even proposals that ought to engender backing would still be met with resistance.
There are other issues I could detail, but felt that cherry picking a few would give my impression and I have provided a link to where I got my information you can peruse if you would like more details.
