‘You’re Not Serious’: The Feud Between AOC and the Green Party’s Jill Stein, Explained

The famously candid progressive Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (or AOC, as she’s popularly known) has sparked a new feud with the Green Party and its longtime flagbearer Jill Stein.

In a video shared on Instagram over the weekend that has since gone viral, Ocasio-Cortez sought to answer the user-submitted question: “How do I tell my friends who are Jill Stein voters they are wasting their time and effort?”

“Y’all, this is a little spicy, but I have thoughts,” Ocasio-Cortez said, before launching into her critique of the perennial third-party presidential candidate. “Trust me, I’ve been on record about my criticisms of the two-party system, so this is not about that,” she said, noting her own candidacy in New York representing both the Democratic Party and the Working Families Party (WFP) and her endorsements of WFP and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates. “What I have a problem with is the fact that if you’re running for president, you are the de facto leader of your party,” she said, “and if you run for years and years and years and years in a row, and your party has not grown and you don’t add city council seats and you don’t add down ballot candidates and you don’t add state electeds, that’s bad leadership. That, to me, is what is upsetting.”

“If,” Ocasio-Cortez continued, “all you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you’re just showing up once every four years to do that, you’re not serious. To me, it does not read as authentic, it reads as predatory.”

The pro-environment, anti-war Green Party—which currently has about 244,000 registered members nationally, down from its peak in 2004 at 319,000—has never had a candidate win federal office. Meanwhile, Green Party presidential candidates, which the party has fielded in every presidential election since 1996, have never earned more than 2.7% of the popular vote—which Ralph Nader earned in 2000 and was widely criticized as a “spoiler” in the extremely tight race that ultimately went to Republican George W. Bush.

Stein, who is the party’s nominee again in 2024 after previous campaigns in 2012 and 2016, shot back at Ocasio-Cortez—whom she labeled “AOC-Pelosi” in apparent reference to Ocasio-Cortez’s evolution from firebrand outsider to Democratic Party mainstream messenger—in a video posted on social media on Tuesday.

“Clearly AOC is the attack dog du jour and the Democrats are running scared. And they should be, because who wants to support a genocide? Who wants to vote for a genocide?” Stein said. “If there’s anything that’s predatory here, it’s saying that your candidate is ‘working tirelessly for a ceasefire’ when actually they are actively funding and arming genocide and actually refusing to even consider an arms embargo which would bring the genocide to a screeching halt.”

The ongoing Israel-Hamas war that has left tens of thousands of Gazans dead has become a divisive presidential election issue that could cost Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris votes, particularly in crucial swing states with significant Muslim and Arab American populations. President Joe Biden’s Administration, of which Harris is a key member, has been criticized for its backing of Israel’s military campaign, and Harris has pledged that as President she would maintain “unequivocal and unwavering” support for Israel’s right to “defend itself” while noting that “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”

Stein went on to blame the Green Party’s lack of power on “the anti-democratic tactics and strategies that the Democratic Party uses to crush and silence political opposition,” citing Democratic efforts to limit ballot access for independent candidates and that Ocasio-Cortez “appropriated” the “signature issue of the Greens”: the Green New Deal.

In many states, it is quite challenging for independent or third-party candidates to get on the ballot. Both the Democratic Party and Republican Party have supported efforts to limit competition in fear of other candidates siphoning votes that could prove decisive in cases where the margins of victory are slim. (In 2016, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in several states by fewer votes than Stein received.) Candidates like Stein and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., before he dropped his 2024 bid and endorsed Trump, have fought such restrictions. According to Politico’s ballot tracker as of Sep. 4, Stein has secured access to the ballot in 30 states, including the seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.