Roe Could Soon Fall, And Jill Stein’s Supporters Made It Possible

Stop making excuses, and start making amends.

Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Announces Her Presidential Run

Dr. Jill Stein (Drew Angerer/Getty)

It now seems likely that the religious right is about to realize its dream of an America that forces rape victims to carry their assailants’ babies to term, young girls to bear children conceived through incest, women to die from unviable ectopic pregnancies and those with unplanned pregnancies to live in poverty.

While a leaked draft opinion by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that would overrule the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion is not the final word, it certainly lends credence to fears that the same court that has already gutted the Voting Rights Act is poised to strike down Roe as well, followed by rulings striking down LGBT rights, especially the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision allowing gay marriage and perhaps also the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision invalidating sodomy laws. But it has also reopened old wounds from the 2016 presidential election, sparking heated back-and-forth between people who supported Hillary Clinton and those who voted for third-party candidate Jill Stein or didn’t bother voting, with the former blaming the latter for helping Donald Trump defeat Clinton, thereby playing a key role in bringing us to this point.

Clinton’s backers are correct, and if progressives who voted and campaigned for Stein or stayed home truly want to play a constructive role in the politics of this country, then they need to admit their serious error of judgment in 2016, acknowledge the harm it has caused, and promise not to repeat it. Stop making excuses, and start making amends.

Since the leak happened Monday night, several people who loudly supported Stein and trashed Clinton in 2016 – such as actress Susan Sarandon and writer Walker Bragman – have taken a lot of flak. The reason is because they have consistently refused to acknowledge, let alone take responsibility for, their role in Trump becoming president and after-effects of his presidency that will haunt this country for decades, opting instead to blame the Democrats.

For example, Sarandon has devoted her Twitter feed to calling out the Democrats for not codifying Roe before. Sarandon endorsed Stein in 2016 because, she believed, Trump would “bring the revolution.”

Bragman infamously wrote an April 2016 article for Salon titled “A liberal case for Donald Trump: The lesser of two evils is not at all clear in 2016.” Although he apparently voted for Biden in 2020, Bragman remains unapologetic about his 2016 advocacy for Stein, tweeting Tuesday, “The same people telling us Democrats can’t do anything to protect abortion rights because of [Sens. Joe Manchin, W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, Ariz.] are blaming 2016’s third party voters and Bernie Sanders for the current SCOTUS even though Republicans held the Senate that year,” he tweeted Tuesday.

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Let’s be clear about something: If Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, she would have appointed three liberal justices who would have upheld Roe, moving the country in a liberal direction for decades just as the court did starting with 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education. Instead, as Vox writer Ian Milhiser observed Tuesday, the court appears to be reverting to the “historic mean” of a reactionary institution that upheld slavery, segregation, internment of Japanese-Americans and union-busting. We can thank Trump for that, and Trump can thank both those who voted to send him to the White House and those who failed to vote to keep him out of it.

Granted, nobody seriously thinks Sarandon, Bragman or any other public figures who supported Stein personally lowered Trump into the chair behind the Resolute Desk. What they did was use their considerable platforms – Sarandon her Hollywood star power and Bragman his reach through prominent outlets like Salon and Paste Magazine – to give an important stamp of approval to casting one’s ballot for Stein. Ultimately, the number of votes Stein received in the key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin dwarfed Clinton’s margin of loss to Trump.

That kind of moral support from public figures whom one admires or regards as thought leaders can absolutely influence decision making. I know that because – and I’m embarrassed to say it publicly – I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, in part because endorsements by celebrities like punk rock singer Jello Biafra, actor Bill Murray and Sarandon persuaded idealistic, politically naïve, 18-year-old me that voting for Nader instead of Al Gore was not only okay, but cool and rebellious. Yet, even though I lived in deep-blue Washington state, meaning my vote didn’t have an impact on the electoral vote, I still regret that error of my youth to this day because I can’t help feeling some moral responsibility for all the awfulness that followed with the Bush administration, including Alito’s 2006 appointment.

The frustration that led some people to vote for Stein, with the seeming impossibility of implementing meaningful change in this country, especially at a time when young people face ballooning costs for basic needs like housing and healthcare on top of uncertain economic prospects, is understandable. But no amount of frustration with an unresponsive political system is an excuse for knowingly enabling fascism.

The stakes were even higher in 2016 than in 2000, and anybody who suggested – as Sarandon and Bragman did – that Trump was either no worse or even somehow more desirable than Hillary Clinton either wasn’t paying attention or was lying.

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Many of us recognized that Trump was not just an ignorant oaf, but a demagogic strongman captaining a burgeoning fascist cult that directly endangered the rights and safety of women, LGBT people, minorities, immigrants and democracy itself. And we recognized that Clinton, whatever one thought of her policy ideas, was the only thing standing in the way of Trump empowering that cult to wreak havoc nationwide with support from the highest levels of government.

But Stein supporters obstinately refused to heed our warnings and put the well-being of the country and marginalized people ahead of their egos.

What followed Trump’s inauguration – family separations at the border, fatal mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Very-Fine-People-gate, efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the Jan. 6 attack and more – only proved alarmists correct. With Trump at its helm, and with the help of a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the Republican Party has morphed into a full-blown authoritarian movement whose sole purpose is to protect entrenched wealth and white, Christian, male supremacy.

While frightening to witness, I found none of this surprising, as someone reasonably well-read about similar events in history.

The Green Party and Stein in 2016 find an unsettling parallel in the German Communist Party and its leader, Ernst Thälmann, in 1930. That year’s Reichstag election marked a major electoral breakthrough for the National Socialists, so the Social Democrats sought to form a coalition with the Communists. But Thälmann refused, viewing the Social Democrats as a greater threat than the Nazis, with whom the Communists even collaborated given their shared contempt for liberal democracy. They attacked the Social Democrats as “social fascists” – painting them as equivalent to, if not worse than the Nazis themselves. In the end, Thälmann’s efforts, undertaken on orders from Stalin, only split the left-wing vote and paved the way for the Nazis’ seizure of power. But this was by design, as Thälmann reasoned that “Hitler must come to power first, then the requirements for a revolutionary crisis [will] arrive more quickly.”

Enabling fascism to bring about the revolution – would Ms. Sarandon or Mr. Bragman care to tell us if that sounds like anyone we know?

Like Thälmann and his German Communists before them, Stein and her supporters have only hastened fascism’s rise and democracy’s demise, and it’s already showing results. Florida, under Trump imitator and Gov. Ron DeSantis, is looking more and more like a Hungarian-style authoritarian regime within the US – complete with bigoted anti-LGBT legislation and use of punitive laws to force companies like Disney to submit to it – which DeSantis hopes to use as a model for the rest of the country as he gears up for a possible 2024 presidential run.

Republicans like DeSantis are showing their true colors because the chance to realize their dream is finally in view: an America where abortion is illegal nationwide, where LGBT people are criminalized, where Black people and other minorities are prevented from voting and where their supporters can run over protestors with their cars or intimidate them with guns – and where “socialist” policies like universal health care and a $15 minimum wage are impossible.

That’s because Trump’s presidency saw the Supreme Court swing far enough to the right to thwart and roll back progress for at least a generation, while voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering help lock in GOP minority rule, and reactionary elements from street thugs like the Proud Boys to think tanks like the Claremont Institute coalesced into a dangerous fascist movement whose power is only growing.

That’s certainly not the revolution that people like Sarandon and Bragman had in mind when they voted for Stein in 2016. But it’s the revolution they helped deliver.

If they want to help make things right, their efforts are welcome. First, they need to show they won’t repeat the disastrous mistake they made six years ago. They can start by apologizing to those of us who now fear our rights will be taken away because of it.


Alaric DeArment is a journalist in New York. Follow him on Twitter at @alaricnyc.