What Cornel West Means To Me

Dr. Cornel West

I understand the appeal of Cornel West’s long-shot Presidential candidacy. He’s a dynamic speaker and deep thinker, with decades of activism regarding American domestic power. Yet in his career as public intellectual and activist, West has never held elective office, with the compromises that entails. He’s never performed the kind of back-room logrolling that Lyndon Johnson used to pass the Civil Rights Act, or Obama used to pass Obamacare.

I’ve noticed two recent center-left political trends. On one hand, Democratic Party loyalists excoriate Cornel West voters and other idealists for stealing votes from the established party, and demands that everyone who opposes today’s Republican Party just shut up and fall in line behind Democratic leadership. On the other, massively online political gadflies claim supporting the Democratic Party means supporting the moribund duopoly that has controlled American politics since 1856.

Cornel West is morally and intellectually superior to literally every single government official in Washington and it's not even remotely close.

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 22, 2023

Therefore I find myself in a difficult position. I appreciate those who condemn the Democratic Party and its willingness to concede almost everything, while the Republicans have become more rock-ribbed, doctrinaire, and intolerant. President Biden has accomplished more than I thought he would, but he also hasn’t accomplished enough, and he squandered the two-year window when Democrats controlled Congress, and could’ve raised the minimum wage or written down unjust debts.

My disgust with the duopoly, though, doesn’t translate into willingness to accept change for change’s sake. West’s idealistic presidential campaign doesn’t pass practical scrutiny for one reason: his party has no down-ballot strategy. West is currently the only declared candidate, at any level, for the newly founded People’s Party, which, like West himself, has no electoral experience whatsoever. The People's Party is the political equivalent of a toddler’s tantrum.

Left-wing and progressive protest parties love running complete political novices for President. Gus Hall ran four times on the Communist Party USA ticket in the 1970s and 1980s, despite, like West, only having experience as an activist. At least two-time Green Party nominee Jill Stein served one-and-a-half terms in the Town Meeting of Lexington, Massachusetts, so she wasn’t a complete neophyte. Stein is now a volunteer for Cornel West’s campaign.

Not that I can blame progressive candidates for focusing on the presidency. The broad center-left coalition notoriously doesn’t bother voting in midterm elections, though that trend might be reversing. Democratic voters often can’t be arsed with campaigns for school board, city council, and mayor. Republican-aligned paranoia, meanwhile, has made local elections, particularly school boards, influential doors into power—though again, that trend maybe faltering.

President Joe Biden

But while this trend is understandable, it’s no less troubling. Progressives want a unitary national executive, while ignoring the nuts-and-bolts aspects of local administration. They embrace a charismatic candidate who speaks their opinions back to them, unsullied by anything as secular as a voting record. Does this sound familiar yet? Not to besmirch Dr. West’s academic reputation and good name, but his supporters clearly want an antimatter Donald Trump.

Or, dare I say, Barack Obama. Like many of my generation, I believed Obama’s high-minded campaign promises. Candidate Obama, like Candidate Trump, campaigned aggressively and stirred up high feelings among True Believers. But Americans keep forgetting the wide gulf between the campaign trail, where candidates speak their truths, and holding office. Besides Obamacare, accomplished in his first eighteen months, Obama’s legacy is mostly sad trombone noises from the West Wing.

Again, don’t misunderstand: I appreciate these supporters’ motivations. It’s discouraging watching former outsider candidates and firebrands like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turn into water-carriers for the calcifying establishment. But we have four years of evidence demonstrating what happens when Americans put a political neophyte in the Executive Branch. While I believe Dr. West has better judgement than Trump, both lack operatives skilled enough to enact their legislative agenda.

Without a down-ballot strategy, this campaign will only split the center-left coalition. Consider Britain, where the Conservative Party has held power continuously for thirteen years, despite remaining massively unpopular with the electorate. This happens, partly, because Britain has several third parties, mostly left-wing. In several constituencies, the center-left vote splits among up to seven candidates, letting Conservatives win with as little as 35% of the vote.

If Dr. West’s supporters could channel their energy into serious candidates, or even bother to show up to county-level Democratic Party meetings, they could sway the political landscape. Both mainstream American parties are dominated by septuagenarians, in no small part, because twenty-somethings don’t much participate in ground-level organizing. Unless it’s the presidency, young voters apparently don’t much care. Nothing will get better unless everyone starts caring.