Those numbers will eventually fall back to earth, Jensen predicted: “I’m just relying on history on that front — unless a third-party candidate’s really well-funded and getting visibility similar to the others that they’re facing [they fade]. Most of these people who are saying they’re voting for Gary Johnson right now will end up voting for Romney.” – The Gary Johnson Factor
Jill Stein, Green Party, and the only female running for president in 2012.
POLITICO’s PIECE ON Gary Johnson, the only real Libertarian who has ever been in the race and who has also gotten some media, is novel, even rare. Our national media can’t focus on anything but the big two parties. However, the only female in the race, Green Party’s Jill Stein, is getting completely ignored at this point. Is her team that bad at media relations or is it something else?
At the very least Dr. Stein deserves attention for being the only female running for president 2012.
It’s also the first time in American history the Green Party has qualified for matching funds. You decide whether this video is inspiring enough for you to get involved.
Our media acts like this doesn’t matter, just because she can’t win. Of course, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when you can’t get any visibility at all.
Would Dr. Stein have a better chance if she didn’t have gray hair, choosing instead to die it some fashionable shade of blonde or brunette? Or is she being ignored because she’s another in a long line of Green Party candidates who don’t understand that the politics of sex has something to do with the presidency, too.
A candidate has to create enough buzz and interest to be covered or in lieu of that raise a stink and demand airtime. You’d think the Green Party could muster that much based on ballot access alone.
How Stein breaks through to at least get headlines for being the only broad in the race is her campaign’s primary job, where they have to begin, and so far they’re lousy at it.
She’s no Hillary Clinton, but it’s media malpractice that the only female in the 2012 race can’t get a headline.
Coming after the 2008 race, where Hillary put 18 million cracks in the toughest glass ceiling of all, it says something about the press that they have no interest in Jill Stein at all.
Barack Obama made himself a political celebrity and ended up beating a political dynasty.
So, any female wanting to be president better be prepared to up her game, because if Jill Stein or any other woman thinks she can do it without also utilizing some showmanship she’s in for a rude awakening and a lot of lost time devoted to a hopeless cause.
Come on, ladies, let’s not reinvent the wheel, delving into serious without any political theater and pizzazz. Go to school on the boys, or at the very least prove you’re interesting and a provocative enough campaigner to be covered by the press.
Thanks for posting this, Taylor. Jill recently qualified for matching funds in my state, but for some reason, is not on the ballot yet. I visited her website and appreciated this from her state of the union message in response to the President’s SOU and the Republican response:
Looks as if I have found my candidate IF she ever gets on the ballot!
I think this is because the major parties have been making it more difficult for third parties to appear on the ballot. The Greens have the same problem in my state – popular enough to qualify for matching funds, but not popular enough to get on the ballot. My state recently altered its election laws in a way that makes it harder for any third party candidate to have an effect on elections. Primaries here are now really the first of two elections, with the fall elections now being a run-off between the two highest vote getters in the “primary”. Effectively, a third party cannot affect the fall election, because there will only be two candidates, who, almost always, will be from the major parties.
I understand why the GOP and Democrats bought into that system. I don’t understand why the rest of us did.
It has nothing to do with her being a woman, it has nothing to do with her grey hair, it has to do with the media being owned by the one percent, it has to do with a corrupt two party system which makes people like Jill Stein fight in the courts for ballot access in what is supposedly the greatest democracy on earth. As a long time supporter of the Green party I was stunned that Stein had gained federal matching funds, I did not think it was possible. But as you say, what good is it if she is invisible to the voting public. The fall debates ( if you could call them that ) will be closed to people like Stein, Roemer and Anderson only because the one percent and their media collaborators have rigged the system to exclude them. The United States is a democracy in name only, ruled by corporate jackals who now have the security forces and financial forces behind them. The American voters docility has allowed this to happen and only they can turn things around. Given the intellectual acuity in this country I really don’t see that happening.
I agree with fangio, that it has everything to do with the media being owned by the one percent, as are the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. If anyone truly believes that Obama is the candidate for the people, then I have some swampland in Florida I’d love to sell to you.
Here is a piece from the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colleen-becker/dr-steins-political-medic_b_1628973.html
Stein nails it with this:
I don’t think that Ms Stein’s being ignored has anything to do with her being gray-haired or a woman. I think it’s great that the Green Party will get matching funds, but the fact is that Ms Stein has run repeatedly for office in Massachusetts, losing each time, and she’s not especially credible as a national candidate as a result.
I think that if a well-known woman with a track record of winning elections was running for President, she’d get plenty of attention. I’m not going to vote for Ms Stein because she’s a woman. I’m going to vote for her because she’s the Progressive in the race.
Gary Johnson won’t get any attention either- last time I checked, he’s not a woman.
I don’t see this as an anti-woman bias, either. It’s an anti-”Serious” bias, meaning she and the other candidates don’t have to win, and aren’t part of the DC establishment, so they aren’t “Serious”. Fangio and jjamele have guessed at the motivations, and they’re probably right, but the basic fact is that this has been the situation for just about ever. Nader and Perot got more attention, but that’s partly because they were part of the system already, and nationally known.
The press should pay attention to these folks, if only because they’re the only candidates who I would consider to be serious about making the country better. They won’t be, though, and even if they were all rich (but unknown) white men, that wouldn’t change one bit.
Sigh. “meaning she and the other candidates don’t have a chance to win”.
YES, she is on the ballot in my state. Now I know who I am voting for this year. Jill Stein will get my vote. This is supposed to be a democracy, any party should be able to get ballot access in this country. I think the two major parties fear competition, they know the fastest growing block are Independents.
um… You actually thought I was serious about her needing to die her hair?
There’s a reason I put the text in the Politico article in bold!
I wrote above & emphasized: At the very least Dr. Stein deserves attention for being the only female running for president 2012.
Translation: it’s on the media.
Gary Johnson has been interviewed on CNN, as well as by Chuck Todd on Daily Rundown. He just got a headline on Politico. That’s being covered.
It’s ignoring the only woman in the race. That doesn’t mean it’s “anti-woman,” which I certainly didn’t write. But being the only female in the race she should be covered.
Hope everyone had a great weekend.
This comment has been deleted, because inflammatory and personally insulting rhetoric used against people/voters/commenters is not allowed.
1. I think it’s hysterical that you think “having no plan” to deal with the massive budget deficit is a disqualifier. So you aren’t voting for anyone, right?
2. I also find it very revealing that you find the idea of legalizing marijuana “extreme.” I find the practice of spending billions of dollars to arrest, try and incarcerate people for using marijuana much, much more extreme.
3. For an Obama supplicant who rushes to defend everything he says or does to call anyone who refuses to automatically vote for one of the two major parties “brainwashed…” well, ’nuff said.
Finally…ah, the RAJensen numbers report. Usually it’s a poll. This time it’s “only morons would vote for a party nobody votes for.” Because for RAJensen, it’s always about winning, all the time, and principal be damned.
Why do you keep bothering with us? Your team is so much bigger than our team, which of course automatically makes it better and the representative of all that is Good and Right. Maybe you should just mark us down as Hopeless and move on now? Your sneer sessions will NOT be missed, I promise.
Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate is a self made millionair businessman who runs on a platform of returning to a free market economic system, de-regulating Wall Street, and autisterity spending budget cuts.. but he is all in for the legalization of marijuana.
Barack Obama is a self-made millionaire who has done next to nothing to regulate Wall Street, and has embraced “austerity spending cuts” (sic.) He’s not for the legalization of marijuana- is that what keeps him out off your “radicals” list?