Americans may not have been ready in 2012 for an independent in the White House, but according to Jill Stein, who's exploring a 2016 run as a Green Party candidate, today's political state of affairs has changed that.
In a conversation with HuffPost Live's Alyona Minkovski on Monday, Stein, who ran on the Green Party ticket in the 2012 election, asserted that "people have really moved" from a two-party system and are now ready to explore alternatives.
"If you look at 2014, the headliner in 2014 was not a win for Republicans -- it was a loss for Democrats," she said. "It was people staying home who have basically checked out of both parties."
The "traditional base of the Democratic Party," composed of "labor, students, women and immigrants," was noticeably unengaged with the 2014 elections, Stein said, leading her to believe that "Democrats have really lost momentum."
"They've really lost their engine and, you know, it really makes it clear that if we're gonna give people a reason to come to the polls, we have to get out there and let them know that they actually have a choice," Stein added.
With Americans fired up about several significant political issues, 2016 is poised to be a "historic moment," one packed with potential for change in both administration and policy, she said.
"We've really hit the wall on the economy, on jobs, on the climate, on student debt, on the crisis in the African-American community, the crisis of police violence," Stein affirmed. "People aren't going to sit there and invest their hopes in exactly the parties that have gotten us in this mess, so it's a very exciting time."
Watch more from Jill Stein's conversation with HuffPost Live in the video above.
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