Jill Stein Political Genius And Existential Threat To Democratic Party

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air misses the point entirely;

'Stein to recount donors: Vote on how you want me to waste your money next'

Well, why not? Donors to Jill Stein’s ludicrous efforts to recount states with too-large-to-change gaps wasted their money while promising the undeliverable. Her fantasies about roving bands of hackers carrying floppy disks visiting every voting machine in only states that Donald Trump won turned out to be paranoid delusions. Wisconsin’s statewide recount, 70% of which was done by hand, produced only a 0.055% change in the outcome … and increased Trump’s lead by 131 votes. Michigan’s results before the recount got shut down at the 40% mark show a similarly small net change (0.078%).

Fresh off of that success, Stein now wants donors to vote on how to use whatever money is left over:

At latest count, Stein had raised $7.33 million for the recount in just 2.5 weeks, and from more than 161,000 donors. The campaign’s latest estimate of costs puts the total recount-related expenses at about $7.4 million — meaning as of now, there would not necessarily be money left over. However, the campaign noted that some costs, such as compliance costs and legal fees for ongoing litigation, could be reduced from their estimates today. In addition, Stein’s campaign expects to receive some of the filing fee back from Michigan, where a recount was started but not completed. …

Stein’s campaign is planning to reach out to each of its 161,000 donors and ask them to vote on which “non-partisan election reform and voting rights organizations” will receive the leftover money. The campaign did not immediately release a list of possible organizations, but said it will do so “in the coming weeks” when it begins surveying donors.

Many suspected that the “organization” that the recount campaign was intended to benefit was Jill Stein. She raised more than twice as much money for the recounts than she did for the entire presidential cycle ($3,509,477), and did it in less than three weeks. That’s pretty curious, actually; how did a fringe candidate raise so much cash so quickly, far more than she had taken in over several months?

Perhaps the issue of fairness should prompt Stein to refund the unused portion of her recount fund back to where she got it — the donors themselves. After all, they coughed up the cash based on Stein’s assertions that fraud would get uncovered in the recounts and that they had standing to demand recounts in all three states. Both were proven laughably false, and in Pennsylvania her lawyers had to admit they had no evidence at all of tampering.

(see rest at link)

Never in the history of politics has a 1% party ever received such massive publicity and funding-a stroke of pure genius.

Stein filed outrageous recount requests, financed from really really dumb donors at the ultra-leftist "Daily Kos" among others in Michigan Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Trump margin of victory was so large that it was impossible for them to be overturned-no recount in history has done so with such margins.



If she had succeeded in this unlikely plot then Trump would have fallen below the required 270 Electoral College votes and the election of president would have been thrown to the House of Representatives. The GOP has a majority of states in the house so Trump would have been elected anyway but that was besides the point. 

The whole idiotic scheme was to give Stein massive publicity, which she has received and to somehow "delegitimize" Trump's win.

The Dem's fantasies still have some more to run though. The plan is for enough Republican electors to vote for someone else so Trump falls below 270. The amazing plan maximum of 37 "faithless Electors" fall into line-good luck with that!

The only positives from all this nonsense is that Stein and the Greens are building their profile and as "fighters for the left" may well bleed off "Sanders-ites" and cause the Dem's massive damage in future. 

Stein's genius was to recognize Trump's methodology of using the media, free of charge, to get massive publicity at next to no cost. Tens of thousands of "progressives" have given Stein their email addresses and are a perfect audience for Stein and the Greens to keep dangling with radical leftist messaging.

The Trump administration is the perfect foil for Stein and the Greens as there will, most certainly, be a major emphasis on using public lands to develop the mining and oil industries. Conservationist groups have already signaled they will fight this every inch of the way and what better imagery for Stein and the Greens than to be on the battlefield, chained to trees if that gets wide publicity?

The potential disaster for the Dem's is obvious. If the Greens ascending as an option for the Sanders/Johnson/Progressives becomes viable (as it absolutely will in due course) then any further bleeding of Dem votes would solidify the rust belt states in the GOP's electoral College Camp, firm up Florida and North Carolina stop Arizona and Georgia moving to the left and even put Minnesota at risk.

For all the ranting about Stein from the Republicans the wider, obvious point was missed. The "recounts' never were a problem, the problem is for the Democratic party from a growing Green movement which, for example, just won the Presidency of Austria against the world-wide trend to the right.