Jill Stein is formally launching a 2024 bid for the White House as the Green Party candidate

Stein is the latest in a series of predominantly left-wing figures announcing candidacies that could erode Biden’s core support

A new front emerged Tuesday in the growing threats to Joe Biden’s presidency as left-wing environmentalist Jill Stein formally launched her third presidential bid in an online conversation with two fellow progressive activists.

The 73-year-old Stein, who is seeking to be the US Green Party nominee, is the latest in a series of predominantly left-wing figures announcing candidacies that have the potential to erode Biden’s core support in an expected rematch against Donald Trump in next year’s poll.

After previously announcing her candidacy with a video on – Palestinian activist.

“This is all about our community standing up for our higher values,” Stein said. “This is a completely unprecedented political moment.”

The choice of protagonists seemed intended to highlight key issues in Stein’s candidacy — workers’ rights, high costs of living and U.S. support for Israel, all issues where Biden is showing vulnerability among his voter base.

“On all these issues, we are in the target hairs,” Stein said. “We must start building an America that works for all of us and that includes a living wage…a Green New Deal…an economic Bill of Rights. We can put an end to endless wars that solve nothing.”

Stein’s entry into the race has particular resonance because of her supposedly decisive role in turning battlegrounds over to Trump in his 2016 presidential election victory over Hillary Clinton.

While she won only 1.4 million votes nationally, Stein won more votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan than Trump’s narrow margins of victory, leading many analysts to conclude that her presence on the ballot was decisive in pulling progressive voters away from Clinton.

Stein was also the Greens’ candidate in the 2012 election, when she won just over 400,000 votes nationally and was not thought to have played a decisive role in President Barack Obama’s victory over Republican Mitt Romney.

Her attempt to win the Green nomination in 2024 follows the decision by the party’s original candidate, Cornel West, last month to leave the party and run as an independent candidate.

Both figures join a growing field of alleged third-party or independent candidates amid growing signs of voter dissatisfaction over the prospect of a repeat of the 2020 presidential race between Biden and Trump.

With the exception of Robert F Kennedy Jr – son of the late attorney general, whose anti-vaccination stance is considered attractive to voters on the right – most non-mainstream candidates are considered to pose a greater threat to Biden than Trump, who is far ahead on other candidates to win the Republican nomination.

Biden, who turned 81 this week, faces growing concerns about his age — even though he is only four years older than Trump — and rumbling economic discontent. A recent poll showed Biden trailing his predecessor in five of the six battleground states he won in 2020.

The president’s path to re-election could become even more complicated if Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator for West Virginia, decides to run as an independent centrist candidate after announcing last week that he would not seek re-election to the Senate.

Manchin has fueled speculation about a presidential election after announcing plans to travel the country to explore the possibility of “creating a movement to mobilize the middle.”

Biden also faces a primary challenge from his own party, in the form of Democratic Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who has announced he will run against the president.

Stein, who is Jewish, has attacked Biden’s continued support for Israel in his response to the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas that killed more than 1,400 people. She has called for a ceasefire on Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, a position that could gain her support in Michigan, a battleground with many ethnic Arab voters who have grown disenchanted with Biden’s pro-Israel stance.

In an interview with Newsweek, she warned that Biden’s support for Israel risked nuclear war. She also called Israel an “apartheid state” and said it was committing “genocide” in Gaza, where more than 13,000 Palestinians have been killed since the country launched its military assault in retaliation for Hamas’ attack.

In her campaign video, launched Nov. 9, Stein, a physician, called both the Democratic and Republican parties “a threat to our democracy.”

“People are tired of being thrown under the bus by wealthy elites and politicians they buy,” she said. “The political system is broken. We need a party that serves the people. I am running for president to offer the people that choice.”