Donations to Jill Stein’s Campaign Jump 1000% Following the Bernie Betrayal

Headline of the day, courtesy of Yahoo.

People are going to be pissed off no matter who wins this election and that is a very important social dynamic I believe is vastly under appreciated by the majority of mainstream pundits and analysts out there.  This is also very distinct from the environment that prevailed in 2008.  Four years ago, the financial markets were crashing and the economic future of America was circling the toilet bowl, yet a majority of Americans embraced the potential of a young, inexperienced biracial politician from Illinois who was saying all of the right things.  Despite the gigantic disappointment he has proven to be as President, there is no denying that he had all of the Democrats and most Independents under his spell on this day four years ago.

Fast forward to 2012 and the county isn’t “divided” as mainstream media talking heads like to say.  The country is pissed off.  Genuine and legitimate frustration permeates the land from sea to shining sea and rightly so.  Ever since the banker coup of 2008, crony capitalism has been institutionalized as the only real way to make money.  If you aren’t connected or “too big to fail,” sorry but America isn’t the place for you.  What makes the economic nightmare so much worse is that it is being coupled with a complete and total decimation of civil liberties.  One by one the Bill of Rights is being ignored and indeed trampled on systemically by the political and economic oligarchs emboldened by their successful takeover of the executive, legislative and for the most part judicial branches of government. 

– From the 2012 post: The Seventy Percent

Most Americans dislike both Presidential candidates on offer from the two major political parties. I would include myself in this category, with the caveat that I haven’t liked a major party candidate for President since I was born.

So while I’ve always been hard to please curmudgeon, this election really is different from a general public perspective. For example, here are a few remarkable findings from a recent Associated Press-GfK poll:

If you think the above environment provides fertile ground for third and fourth party candidates, you’d be right — a development I welcome with open arms. In the wake of the Bernie betrayal, Jill Stein of the Green Party is proving to be the greatest beneficiary.

For instance, The Guardian reports:

We received 375 responses on readers’ plans for their November vote. And despite the show of solidarity with Clinton on Tuesday, Sanders’ fans aren’t all convinced the presumptive Democratic nominee is who they will now support: Green party nominee Jill Stein was the most popular among reader respondents, with 171 new supporters, more than double the number who said they would move their support to Clinton. 

A write-in vote for Sanders was also a popular option, with just 20 respondents opting for Trump. These results aren’t necessarily a representative sample, and they differ significantly from a Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday, which found that 85% of Sanders supporters intended to vote for Clinton.

Personally, I found that Pew poll preposterous. I have several friends who are staunch Sanders supporters and precisely 0% of them will be voting for Hillary. In any event, here are the results from The Guardian:

Now let’s follow the money, which seems to be flowing into Jill Stein’s coffers. US Uncut reports:

Jill Stein, the presumptive Green Party presidential nominee, is seeing an unprecedented surge of energy for her campaign in the wake of Bernie Sanders’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

Stein, who is running her second presidential campaign in four years, said donations to her campaign have increased tenfold in just over 24 hours, obviously due to Bernie Sanders’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton and a resulting fallout from the Democratic Party.

Since Tuesday morning, the Green Party has received over $80,000 in contributions, over half of which comes from first-time donors, and half of which comes in the form of contributions under $50. Tellingly, about 615 of those contributions totaled $27, the exact number commonly trumpeted and solicited by the Sanders campaign during his revolutionary grassroots funding movement.

“There’s been an explosion of Berners coming in through every portal of the campaign, and it’s really exciting,” Stein told US Uncut in a phone interview. “There is so much courage out there to stand up to the marching orders handed down by the usual suspects.”

Stein’s social media accounts have also seen tremendous growth and engagement in the past 24 hours. A recent livestream posted to the Stein campaign’s Facebook page has been viewed over 300,000 times in less than a day. Her page itself has added approximately 44,000 new likes in the past week. Her Twitter account has over 145,000 followers as of this writing, increasing by the tens of thousands just this week, with 5.6 million impressions on July 12-13 alone. There have also been 10,000 new signups for her email list since yesterday.

Other Sanders supporters seem to be preparing a mass exodus from the Democratic Party to help Stein reach her goal of 15 percent in national polls, which would secure a spot for her on the general election debate stage with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the presumptive nominees of the Republican and Democratic parties. Many influential Sanders supporters and pro-Sanders accounts with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers have already announced their intent to vote for Stein in November.

According to Stein’s website, her campaign has secured ballot access in 23 states and Washington, DC, and petition signatures are currently being collected for ballot access in 27 others. Stein said her campaign has “many irons in the fire” and will be on “90 to 95 percent” of ballots after petitions are delivered to various Secretaries of State.

“There are 43 million young people and not-so-young people who are locked into predatory student loan debt,” Stein said. “The birth rate is plummeting in this country because we have a generation that’s basically become indentured servants. They don’t have a place to live, they don’t have relationships, they don’t have a future, they don’t have families, they don’t have a job. We really have a generational crisis right now that we’re in the midst of. And there’s one way that crisis can be solved with the stroke of a pen. That debt can be cancelled, and I’m the only candidate who will do that. Those 43 million votes have only one place to go.”

“If that word gets out, that can be a very powerful motivator for those people to vote for my campaign, and that’s a plurality of votes.” Stein continued. “In the words of Alice Walker, ‘The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.’”

While the outcome may be miserable, it’s certainly going to be an interesting election.

For related articles, see:

“Bernie or Bust” – Over 50,000 Sanders Supporters Pledge to Never Vote for Hillary (It’s now 124,000)

Jill Stein of the Green Party – Clinton Helped Create Trump

Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson Polls Ahead of Hillary Clinton Amongst Independents

Thoughts on Election Day: Relax—Both Parties Are Going Extinct

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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