Next year’s presidential election is expected to be close, and President Joe Biden isn’t taking any chances, not even at the margins.
This month, some big-name Democrats have been sounding the alarm about a possible spoiler candidate. They’re warning about a third-party challenge from Harvard University professor Cornel West.
West may nab the Green Party’s nomination for president… and he isn’t mincing words about his distaste for Biden.
“With Biden, again, I love the fella, but he’s a hypocrite, and he’s pushing toward World War III with this talk about — what he’s said about China and Russia,” West has said on C-SPAN.
“In 2016, the Green Party played an outsized role in tipping the election to Donald Trump,” political consultant David Axelrod tweeted Friday. “Now, with Cornel West as their likely nominee, they could easily do it again. Risky business.”
Axelrod served as chief strategist for former President Barack Obama’s two campaigns.
“If there is concern about how close the general election might be, with memories of Jill Stein from 2016, this should concern Biden and the Democrats a little bit, based on the issues that Cornel West will be able to address,” said Basil Smikle, another Democratic Party strategist. “If you’re Joe Biden, you know that this is likely to be a close race, whether it’s Trump or DeSantis or whoever it is.”
Even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has warned about West’s potential to spoil the election, while also acknowledging some third parties’ capacity “to send a message and to really kinda discuss some of these issues in real time.”
“We cannot risk it, especially in critical electoral college states that are decided by tens of thousands of votes,” Ocasio-Cortez said on a podcast.
Take a look —
#Campaign2024 WATCH: @CornelWest discusses his @GreenParty US presidential bid & why he calls President Biden a "hypocrite" pic.twitter.com/gWlP13ZM06
— Washington Journal (@cspanwj) June 28, 2023
Some conservatives have cautioned against blaming the Green Party for the Democrats’ own failures.
In 2016, the Libertarian Party commanded many, many more votes than the Green Party, and the Libertarian candidates presumably peeled these votes from the GOP.
In 2020, the Green Party failed to appear on the ballot in Georgia, a decisive state in that election. The Green Party ran write-in candidates in that state… but the Libertarian Party put its candidates on the ballot.
West was originally running on the People’s Party, an organization formed in 2017. The People’s Party once attracted some luminaries — like Marianne Williamson, the Democrat running a longshot challenge to Biden.
However, the People’s Party recently became engulfed in scandals. It’s faced allegations about sexual harassment in leadership, and so far it’s set to appear on the ballot in only one state, Florida.
West himself acknowledged these scandals in an interview with The Nation. “In terms of the history of the People’s Party, you know, I was there at the founding. There’s no doubt about that. And I’ve been a kind of honorary member of the board, even though I haven’t participated. So I haven’t followed all of the insides and outsides of what has happened. It strikes me that there’s been some very bad and ugly moments,” West said.
Now, West has left behind the People’s Party, and he’s running on the Green Party. He abandoned a party with no chance of winning for… a party with a very slim chance of winning.
The Green Party gained national attention in the year 2000 for commanding 10,000 votes in Florida, with George W. Bush eventually winning the Sunshine State by fewer than 600 votes.
The Democrats haven’t forgotten.
The Horn editorial team