 The Majority Report recently mocked the idea of another Jill Stein presidential run. Sam Seder and his co-hosts criticized the Green Party on the whole as ineffectual. Producer Matt Lech called upon the Greens to look inward after repeated failures to capitalize on disaffection with the duopoly. Seder himself agreed, and defended the tried strategy of leftists building power within the Democratic Party. Lech’s critique is a common but cynical one. Every election, he and his fellow progressives urge folks to disregard the Greens and vote for the lesser evil instead. When Americans follow that suggestion, they point to it as proof the Greens are a joke — a self-fulfilling prophecy. It feels unfair to entirely blame the victim for a fate you helped engineer. Those who claim voting Green is a waste create the perception that third parties are futile and doomed to failure. But that is false. Although third parties face daunting systemic obstacles, if enough people vote for them, they win. That is a fact Lech and those like him are reluctant to admit. Seder’s critique too is flawed. By pointing to the progressive Democratic caucus, he essentially states that leftists already have an electoral movement. A third party, therefore, is unnecessary. But the last year especially has shown the sharp limits of trying to build power within the Democratic Party. With relative ease, Democrats unseated two of their most pro-Palestine party members: Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. In just six weeks, the Democratic establishment was able to shrink The Squad by 33%. Now, it sits at only four members — or just 1.8% of the Democratic caucus. Its legislative power is virtually zero, particularly given Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s penchant for appeasing her more conservative colleagues. Ocasio-Cortez’s tendency to toe the line of Nancy Pelosi, who she affectionately calls “Mama Bear,” directly violates her public persona. To her fans, Ocasio-Cortez is a progressive firebrand who will stop at nothing to deliver materially for struggling Americans. Ocasio-Cortez’s online shop even sells sweaters that label her as a “brawler for the working class.” Her actual record, however, is increasingly unambiguous. In 2022, after demanding better conditions for railway workers, Ocasio-Cortez voted for a bill that forbade them from striking. She wept outside of migrant detentions under Donald Trump but was conspicuously silent when Joe Biden threw kids in cages. Ocasio-Cortez again cried over a congressional bill to fund Israel’s Iron Dome — before refusing to vote against it. As The Squad shrinks, and progressive power dwindles, pressure to side with the Democratic establishment will only grow. It might seem, then, like the answer is simply to elect more progressive Democrats. But recall what happened last year. Just as representatives Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman became particularly vocal advocates for Palestinian rights, the party swiftly ousted them. Should the progressives have another unusually good electoral cycle like in 2018, the establishment can easily cull the herd again. In other words, Seder’s favored strategy of forging leftist power within the Democratic Party is like erecting sandcastles. Whatever you build can be quickly washed away. Primary challenges are one mechanism for undoing progress, but there are others. Simply being an elected Democrat, for example, is a corrupting force. Representatives inculcate into the unsavory world of donors, lobbying, and realpolitik. It was not long ago that progressives were excited about candidate John Fetterman. Socialist publications ran favorable profiles of him. Fetterman was the relatable, plainspoken champion of universal programs they had long awaited — the heir apparent to Bernie Sanders. Then he took office and acted far more like Joe Manchin than the senator from Vermont. Supporting Israeli genocide has been Fetterman’s pet issue, with otherwise conservative staffers quitting over his bizarre Zionist fixation. The experiment of trying to build leftism within the Democratic Party has only confirmed the necessity of creating independent structures. American socialists need an electoral movement that is beyond the reach of arch neoliberals like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. From the beginning, it should have been obvious that a party receiving record Wall Street donations cannot nurture progressive ideals. As Bowman and Bush can attest, the Democratic Party is simply an inhospitable host. Leftists should look elsewhere. While the Green Party is an obvious alternative, it too has problems. On foreign policy, the Greens have many sound positions. They want to dismantle the war machine, steadfastly oppose Israel’s Gaza genocide, and generally favor diplomacy over conflict. But the party also indulges the same Trotskyite canards that have long plagued the Western Left. In 2024, for example, the Green presidential ticket called Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad “war criminals responsible for immense suffering.” The Greens even labeled Russia an “imperialist power” for its special military operation in Ukraine. By condemning both Putin and the American war machine, the Greens channeled the Trotskyist slogan of “neither Washington nor Moscow.” They also entertained the classic and tired false equivalency of equating imperialists with those fighting imperialism. Russia’s resistance against NATO’s neocolonial expansion is not imperialism but the exact opposite. The same goes for Bashar al-Assad’s resistance to what Australian academic Tim Anderson calls the global “dirty war on Syria.” Unfortunately, the Green Party joined the chorus of voices obscuring these facts, further muddying the geopolitical waters. These shortcomings are not just minor quibbles. Indeed, they undermine the Green Party’s credibility as an anti-imperialist force. This matters greatly, as imperialism is the issue that decides all others. Centuries of Western hegemony have been an utter disaster for people and the planet. It is the central catalyst for runaway climate change, widening inequality, and perpetual war and conflict. While the Global South is leading push toward multipolarity, we need forces in the metropole pushing in the same direction. That is the essence of global solidarity. And the Green Party, for all of its positives, simply is not up to the task. The American Communist Party (ACP), however, is. Under a year old, the ACP has already forged impressive bilateral relations with foreign revolutionaries. In April, it sent representatives to Moscow’s International Anti-Fascist Forum. A month prior, ACP plenary committee members Chris Helali and Jackson Hinkle spoke at the International Palestine Conference in Yemen. They were the first Americans in years to do so. Days later, party members publicly debated in favor of ending American support for Ukraine and its needless saber-rattling against Russia. And this is just the beginning. While still in its infancy, the ACP shows immense potential to be a powerful and authentically anti-imperialist force. Unlike the Greens, it unerringly opposes empire and supports multipolarity. American leftists should take heed, and join the party in its quest to bring freedom to all the world’s people. With chapters in 28 states, the opportunities to organize are manifold. Author Youhanna Haddad is a North American Marxist of the Arab diaspora. Through his writing, he seeks to combat the Western liberal dogmas that uphold racial capitalism. You can contact him at [email protected]. Archives May 2025
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