Go West Again?

Oh, great, just like in 2020, another black guy named West could give the Presidency to Trump.

Last time, it was Kanye.  This time it's Cornel - Dr. Cornel West,  one of the most prominent scholars of black history in America.  Dr. West - as I shall refer to him to avoid confusion with the dude that white pop-music critics praised as a genius to keep their jobs - is a candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2024.  Apparently Dr West - who supported Jill Stein in 2016 and is getting support from her in return - thinks that President Biden has moved too slowly in bringing social and economic justice to the American people (forget for a moment Republican roadblocks to further progress) and so believes he should stand for election to the highest office in the land.

Democrats are already worried about how Dr. West could win enough votes, especially from black voters but also from progressives in general, to deprive President Biden of victories in key swing states and allow Trump to win back the White House.  For now, at least, I take that prediction with a grain of salt.  See, I actually have voted Green, as you will recall, and it was in 2016.  I not only voted for Jill Stein,  I attended a Green Party rally led by Dr. Stein herself at Montclair State University in New Jersey.  The group picture of the rally below clearly shows me just a couple of yards away from the candidate herself!   (Note the pink circles!)   

I voted for Dr. Stein - in New Jersey, a state which Hillary Clinton won by a majority - for two reasons.  One was to express my disgust at how the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign ridiculed my preferred Democratic presidential candidate, Martin 'O'Malley, and laughed him out of the campaign.  I wanted revenge.  The second reason was to help the Green Party get at least 5 percent of the national vote and thus qualify for federal matching funds in 2020, as  I saw the Democrats going the way of the Whigs.  Well, that didn't happen, and progressives did nothing to start a new party when the Democratic Party was on the verge of disintegrating in early 2017.

Since then, the Democratic Party has bounced back, and President Biden has many accomplishments to his credit, such as revitalizing investments in infrastructure, taming inflation, fighting climate change, and expanding domestic manufacturing.  In other words, all that stuff that progressives like.  I'm sure that progressives will look at Biden's record and conclude that he is doing the best he can while facing tough Republican obstruction and cut him some slack.  And I'm also sure that they'll realize that Cornel West could be a spoiler for Trump if they support him over Biden.

And, while President Biden is running as an incumbent with a record to run on, Hillary Clinton had no presidential record to run on at all as a first-time presidential nominee.  Also, Dr. Stein did as well as she did in 2016 because a lot of progressives were not going to vote for Hillary Clinton.  Hillary didn't lose votes to Dr. Stein; she never had them, least of all mine, in the first place.  I voted for Dr. Stein in part because I did not like Hillary Clinton, especially after the sham nomination process her minions orchestrated, which left Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders supporters seething in anger.  On the other hand, I like Joe Biden.  I like what's he's done.  I'm satisfied.

Why should I vote for Cornel West now?  Why should anyone in the Democratic base do so?