Jill Stein: The Only Candidate Who Doesn’t Hate Progressives

It’s getting hard to find decent articles about Jill Stein these days. If the media isn’t ignoring her, it’s printing vapid attack editorials about how she’s completely unqualified to make the big, important decisions a U.S. president needs to make every day, like which country to carpet bomb over crude oil.

The only non-hostile stories about her this week have been about how creationist/libertarian Ron Paul recently mentioned something to MSNBC about her foreign policy being better than the other candidates’, which is hardly even a compliment when your only competition is Gary “What’s Aleppo?” Johnson, Donald “The world needs more torture” Trump, and Hillary “Forget January, I’ma start a war with Russia now” Clinton.

Now, I enjoy watching Dr. Jill melt pundits’ faces with her astonishing foreign policy acumen as much as the next gal, but it’s kinda weird that that’s the only thing anyone’s said about her lately. I mean, we’re still just a few days on from hearing Hillary Clinton verbally urinating on the entire progressive movement, dismissing Berners as naive children living in their parents’ basements, scoffing at people who see universal healthcare and tuition-free college as reasonable possibilities, and describing herself as politically center-left to center-right (read: center-right, but owns a “Coexist” bumper sticker).

“No Longer A Protest Vote: Why I’m Genuinely Falling In Political Love With President Jill Stein” by Casey Evans https://t.co/QJoxI3P5Nb

— Amy Hunter (@amyzworldamy) August 9, 2016

That’s right: Jill Stein is not just the only candidate who has never been a Republican (Google it), she’s also the only candidate who hasn’t demonstrated a marked disdain for progressives and everything they stand for. You’ve got Trump and Johnson, who want to slash your social benefits while themselves paying little or no taxes on their considerable private fortunes, and you’ve got Clinton, who dismisses progressive ideals as “pie in the sky stuff” and is okay with everyone paying taxes except for her and her husband (interesting article here by the Nation if you’re curious about that one).

Jill Stein doesn’t scoff at the possibility of tuition-free college; she’s been consistently insisting not only that education is a right from preschool through university, but that the entirety of student debt in America can and should be forgiven. Jill Stein doesn’t make fun of progressives for wanting universal healthcare while addressing her private enclave of wealthy donors; she decries the corporatist Affordable Care Act as a woefully inadequate statute, written by insurance companies and placing an unconscionable burden on the poor, arguing instead for a “Medicare for all” single-payer public health insurance program.

And she’s right. You know she’s right. If you’re a progressive, you’ve probably known since you were a little kid that the kind of world Jill Stein wants to help build is not only possible, but it’s vastly more sane than this absolutely stupid setup we’ve got going for us right now.

It’s absolutely stupid that we can have all these pointless multi-trillion-dollar wars and hundreds of military bases all over the planet, but we’re told we can’t afford to educate our young people.

It’s absolutely stupid that we can give corporate welfare to Wal-Mart, but we’re told we can’t afford to take care of our sick.

It’s absolutely stupid that we can perpetuate the outrageously expensive and completely ineffective war on drugs, but we’re told we can’t afford to provide for our elderly.

It’s absolutely stupid that we can gift massive tax breaks and unclosed loopholes to a bunch of billionaires so they can buy even more elections, but we’re told that taking drastic action to avert climate catastrophe is out of the question.

Don’t ever let these creeps mock you or dismiss you for what you know is true. They’re the stupid ones, not you.

Jill Stein is the only candidate who doesn’t scoff at your wise and insightful vision for what this world can be. Jill Stein is the only candidate who supports you in that intelligence.

She cares. She became a doctor to help people, and she became a politician for the same reason. She selflessly encouraged her supporters to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and even offered Sanders her spot as her party’s nominee before the Green Party convention. This isn’t an ego thing for her. It’s about something bigger. Something beautiful.

That’s nothing to scoff at.

Not in my basement.

[Featured Image by John Minchillo/AP Images]