Jill Stein says 'terrified' Democrats only have themselves to blame if she wrecks Harris' 2024 election chances

Jill Stein was never going to budge.

During the final days of the 2024 campaign, the Green Party presidential candidate spoke with DailyMail.com and suggested there was nothing Vice President Kamala Harris could have done to push her from the race.

The physician and activist is running on a third party ticket, and any votes she receives have the potential to upend what could be one of the closest elections in history.

A thousand ballots cast for Stein in one of six battleground states where she appears on the ballot - she's not competing in Nevada - could tilt the election.

Democrats fear that it will hurt Harris' chances of taking the keys to the White House if Stein is successful Tuesday night. With America bitterly divided and the U.S. involvement in the Gaza war a source of anger for millions, the left-leaning Stein could be perceived as a viable alternative.

While Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was convinced by former President Donald Trump to abandon his independent presidential bid in exchange for a role in a Trump 2.0 White House, Stein said no such overtures were made. Nor would she have accepted them.

'We would never have trusted them to have backed off the genocide. We would not have trusted them to do that,' she said in a phone interview Thursday. 'So we would have remained in that race as a watchdog and as a threat against their backsliding.'

The genocide Stein is referring to is Gaza and the 'they' she speaks of is Harris and the even-more-guilty Democratic National Committee, 'which is the real mouthpiece for the shaming and blaming of independent voters.'

While Stein ran for president in 2012, it was in 2016 when she became more memorable due to the condemnation she received after Hillary Clinton lost, as more people voted for the Green Party hopeful than Clinton lost by in Michigan and Pennsylvania. 

Clinton herself wrote in her memoir: 'There were more than enough Stein voters to swing the result, just like Ralph Nader did in Florida and New Hampshire in 2000.' 

But Stein threw cold water on that sentiment.  

'If you look at the data in 2016, the exit polls showed that people who voted for our campaign would not have otherwise come out,' she explained. 'So this charge that we stole votes is really a very self-serving piece of propaganda, essentially.'

She said that her supporters found it 'ludicrous and offensive' that they would have backed Clinton.

'And ludicrous that they were ever supporting Joe Biden and then when Kamala Harris failed to distinguish herself from Joe Biden, she never had these voters either,' Stein said.

Harris - who took over the Democratic nomination from Biden in July - has found herself in an impossibly tricky situation politically when it comes to the war in Gaza.

Her rhetoric has been more sympathetic to the Palestinian civilians being killed - and she talked tough after her meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just days after Biden's withdrawal - but Harris has not backed an arms embargo, as many on the left want.

It wouldn't matter if Harris had, said Stein.

'Would I have bowed out? No,' Stein said. 'Because power concedes nothing without a demand, right? If we bowed out, that's the end of the Green Party, not just in this election, but period. 

'Because you have to maintain your ballot status in order to jumpstart your next race,' she continued. 'You want to get the best result you possibly can because of the way ballot access rules are written. You have to come out of there with the highest percentage of the vote possible in order to roll over your ballot access.' 

When RFK Jr. suspended his campaign in August he initially told his supporters in swing states to back Trump. 

He told those in safe red or blue states to vote for him.  

Would Stein have ever instructed her supporters to do the same for Harris had the Democrat been more supportive of an arms embargo and the Palestinian cause? 

'Well I would say that, you know, what are the odds that Harris would have done that?' Stein asked. 

'The odds that Harris would have ever done that, you know, are pretty much non-existent,' she continued. 'From the intensity of the support by Harris and Biden for Netanyahu. Effectively Netanyahu is our commander-in-chief right now.' 

While Stein's Green Party has become a place for many Muslim and Arab-American voters to now call home, Jewish Insider reported this week on comments her running mate, Rudolph 'Butch' Ware, made celebrating violence against Israelis - especially on or marking October 7.

When asked if there's 'daylight' between her and her running mate on the subject, Stein said: 'So in my view, October 7 is part of a long exchange. That basically began with massacres even before the founding of the state of Israel.'

'And I think that's easily lost sight of when people take a position on October 7,' she said. 'So truth to tell I avoid being distracted by October 7. It's just the latest in a series of exchanges.' 

'There's also a lot of fog of war around what happened on October 7,' the Green Party candidate said. 

She then added, 'not that it wasn't horrible.'

'It was horrible, I abhor all violence against civilians,' Stein said. 

'At the same time, according to international law, there is a right of resistance. There is a right of armed resistance from an occupied people,' she argued. 

Stein also said she disagreed with the framing that October 7th caused the current Israeli assault on Gaza. 

'You can put the goal post wherever you want,' she said. 'The problem began when Zionists came with the intention of violently displacing Palestinians. So if you need to put a goal post, I would put it there.'

When asked if Stein understood why some people might be offended by her running mate's comments about October 7, she replied: 'People are going to get upset.'

'This is a very controversial issue. Our opposing genocide is extremely controversial,' she said. 'I think Jews are a traumatized people. Many Jews having come out of the anti-Semitism of Europe and the Holocaust.'

Stein, herself, is Jewish.  

'And you know, as a Muslim himself, he has a different set of sensitivities and you know, history of trauma. And as an African-American himself, he has a whole other history of trauma,' Stein added. 

'I think we're not the same person, and we can have different views, and our views are controversial because we are opposing a system of economic and political elites that are doing all they can to try to drum up fear campaigns and smear campaigns against us,' she also said. 

In particular, Stein bristled at comments made by progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who discouraged Green-curious voters by saying the presidential hopeful hasn't done anything to build up the party between election cycles. 

'If you have been your party's nominee for 12 years in a row, and you cannot grow your movement, pretty much at all, and can't peruse any successful strategy...and all you do is show up every four years to speak to people who are justifiably p***ed off, you're not serious,' AOC said in an Instagram story last month. 'To me, it does not read as authentic, it reads as predatory.'

Stein brought up Ocasio-Cortez unprompted. 

'And, by the way, the AOC thing is a lie. That is a lie,' she said. 'We have, we had, we've elected over 1,500 local elected officials and have currently 150 in office. So we don't go away. The big media goes away.' 

Stein was talking to DailyMail.com from Pittsburgh Thursday morning, but she was headed to California - a deep blue state - over the weekend before spending her final hours campaigning in Dearborn, Michigan.

'So as you can see, our strategy goes well beyond swing states,' Stein said. 'It's really where there are real hotbeds of political activism.' 

Dearborn became the first Arab-majority city in the U.S. in 2023 and Michigan is the likeliest of the six battlegrounds where Stein competing could have an impact. 

During the Michigan Democratic primary held in February, 101,623 voters said they were 'uncommitted' instead of backing President Joe Biden, a protest vote over his handling of Gaza - showing its potency as an issue in the Wolverine State.

A Marist poll of Michigan published on Friday morning has Harris ahead by three percent, with one percent backing another candidate. 

The Real Clear Politics polling average on Friday has Harris up by 2.4 points over Trump, with Stein receiving an average of 1.8 percent of Michigan's vote share. 

Nationally, Stein is polling at 1.1 percent, according to the RCP average. 

A speaker at a recent event headlined by Stein in Dearborn openly admitted they had no expectations of winning the White House.  

'But we do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan.' former Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant told the crowd.

As for what success looks like for Stein Tuesday, she answered that will be 'what comes out of it.' 

'Are we establishing new parties? Do we have more candidates running for office?'  

'And as horrific as this genocide is, you know, and the climate crisis, it is a big wake-up moment now for so many Americans,' she said. 

'And this is why the Democrats are running scared. This is why they are taking out ads against us. They're absolutely terrified and they have no one to blame but themselves,' she said. 

'But Kamala Harris could have earned those votes back in a heartbeat by, you know, by agreeing to an embargo,' Stein said. 

But Stein, of course, would have remained on the ballot.