Nobody for President
The announcement of a presidential campaign by Professor Cornel West is unwelcome. (By the way, it’s one “L.”) The outcome is potentially disastrous. There is no upside. Stopping Trump is the priority.
West is a brilliant man, even a great man, but his head for politics is lacking. One bit of evidence was his behavior when he had the opportunity to weigh in on Democratic Party platform deliberations in 2016. Subsequently he endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein. That’s a big no-no. If you accept a seat at the table, you don’t take your ball and go home when you don’t get what you want.
I’m second to nobody in my distaste for Hillary Clinton, but voting for her in November of 2016 was the political imperative for anyone in their right mind. After all, we have fully experienced the sickening alternative. Who wants to do that again.
Item #2 was sharing platforms with the ridiculous Robert Avakian, guru of the so-called Revolutionary Communist Party, which is neither revolutionary, communist, nor a party. Enough said about that.
The Green Party arguably helped tip the 2016 election to the Tapioca Turd in a handful of states. Now its hapless, grifty, Russophilic standard-bearer Jill Stein will run the West fiasco. West is an infinitely better messenger than Stein, and Joe Biden is looking weak these days, notwithstanding his achievements as president, so the Green initiative is dangerous.
When asked about the spoiler factor, West evaded the question and commenced to babbling about how you fight fascism. Surely you don’t fight fascism by facilitating its access to power.
A subsumed debate is over whether West should instead contest for the nomination in the Democratic primaries. This would avoid the spoiler problem but still be ineffectual. In the same vein, the campaign of Marianne Williamson could only be of limited value.
All of the likely yammering about the inadequacies of government policy is irrelevant, even idiotic, in light of the realities of the U.S. Congress. That criticism was better focused on Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, who both came into office with healthy majorities in Congress and proceeded to piss them away. In both cases, it was for the sake of deficit reduction.
Today the problem isn’t the government, it’s the voters. They need to be shepherded to think differently. A West campaign in the primaries is unlikely to change that.
Any West campaign is likely to retard the progress of the Left. Presently the most active sector of the Democratic electorate is middle class, suburban women. A left-identified campaign to impede Joe Biden, and thereby facilitate the further liquidation of reproductive rights, among other things, will reduce the appeal of the Left.
A debate is forming inside Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) over whether to support West. Its permanently enraged millennial/Gen Z ranks are itching to form a third party. Aside from the spoiler factor, the fact is that DSA is not positioned to grow. In fact, it has been losing membership. Most of its campaigns are ill-advised, and the ones that aren’t are misdirected as well.
DSA’s best priority is labor. In fact, a big upcoming Teamster strike against UPS promises another opportunity. Unfortunately, the record is not promising, in light of the recent shenanigans around the railroad workers. DSA ended up attacking its most likely allies – in the Congress and among the workers – for failing to restart the Paris Commune. Moreover, the criticism was replete with idiotic gaslighting about non-existent picket lines.
The organizing failure there paralleled the older abstention from the biggest anti-racist upsurge in the past sixty years, around Black Lives Matter and George Floyd.
Presently our political fates hang on the slender reed of middle-class and independent voter alienation from Trump and from the Republican Party that he has transformed into a neo-fascist enterprise. Noam Chomsky called the G.O.P. “the most dangerous organization in the history of the world.” Without an effort to prevent its return to power, the difficult grass-roots work needed to transform the electorate will be impossible.
I wrote on his Web site:
"I had great respect for you as a multifaceted public figure. But now you are poised to facilitate the return to power of the would-be dictator and coup architect.
"UO Law School Dean Derrick Bell said in an interview in the Clinton Street Quarterly, and repeated to me in person (waiting in the line at Eugene's Butte to Butte road race), that America would only change when white people suffered as much as black people already had. ("As if that will ever happen," as Dr. J_______ B_______ muttered to me.) I wonder if that's your plan, by way of facilitating the return to power of the fascist narcisist.
"That ploy NEVER works. The way to change is to show that things can be better by making things better. Joe Biden has achieved more in this vein than any president since Lyndon Johnson, who was so beneficial that he turned the powers in an entire reactionary region against his party. Don't go down the malign path of helping more malignity."
Probably a waste of good rhetoric.
This is what I posted on Metro DC DSA FB page:
I agree with Sawicky that defeating Trump and the Republicans is a priority, but as Democratic pundits have argued since Nader ran in 2000 he raises the false flag of spoiler. Cornel West will be a splendid candidate for the Green Party, of which I am a member, because of his critique of Wall Street Imperialist Democrats and of course the fascist agenda of Trump and Republicans. Cornel West should outline the consequences of how people vote, depending on their state with respect to its votes in the Electoral College. Rather than telling people how to vote, respect their choices and emphasize the imperative of defeating Trump and Republicans. This will maximize the building of an independent anti-imperialist party and strengthen the chances of defeating Trump and Republicans in 2024.
In addition, this kind of "vote like I tell you to do" turns people off, rather show respect for the vo\er and share your analysis of the consequences regarding the Electoral College vote depending on the state the voter lives in. If Nader. hadn't run in 2000, Gore would likely got fewer national votes and Elecloral College votes too, since he energized a lot of youthful voters who ended up voting for Gore. No case that Jill Stein was a spoiler in 2016 since most of her voters in the swing states would have stayed home rather than vote for Clinton. Please stop pontificating, rather show respect.