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?

The Doctors Are In

I thought I'd let others do the talking on my blog this time.

After NBC News and the Daily Kos - two apologist media outlets for the Democratic establishment, the latter being especially adept at mainstream-liberal smugness - reported on a trip Green Party leader Jill Stein made to Russia in December 2015 in an effort to paint her as a stooge of Vladimir Putin and a willing participant to undermine Hillary Clinton for Donald Trump's benefit, Dr. Stein waited for awhile to muster up a defense.  She finally offered one last week.  Here are her comments in their entirety:  

NBC recently reported that I had been at an event in Russia along with Vladimir Putin in 2015. Notice that whenever you see this story in the corporate media, it consists of nothing more than a photo, because if they reported any of the facts behind the photo it would undermine the story they are trying to invent. In reality, the NBC report didn’t say anything that wasn’t in my campaign’s press release about the Moscow event in December 2015. My trip to Russia, like my visit to the COP21 climate conference in Paris as part of the same trip, was about promoting diplomacy, peace, and international cooperation on pressing global issues. I criticized the militaristic policies of both the Russian and US governments, and proposed an alternative vision: working together on a “Peace Offensive” to de-escalate conflict in the Middle East and around the world. I was one of a number of American advocates for a more peaceful and just foreign policy in Moscow, including Thom Hartmann, Rocky Anderson, Ray McGovern, Max Blumenthal, and Jesse Ventura. The Moscow conference featured public figures, politicians and academics from across Europe and North America, as well as journalists and major media leadership from India, China, Russia, Europe and the US. It was an honor to be able to address the international community, and show them we Greens are fighting for a foreign policy based on international law. human rights and diplomacy, not on economic and military domination.

It is not only justifiable to attempt to communicate with other nations, it’s essential to do so if we are to have any hope of solving the gravest threats to human survival: endless war, climate meltdown and the threat of nuclear conflict. The Greens are the only political party with a plan to address all these issues. No wonder we are under attack by both Democrats and Republicans, and their surrogates in the corporate media, even outside the election cycle.

NBC and other corporate media outlets have tried to create the impression that I refuse to answer questions about my Russia trip. Actually, I have answered these questions so many times I’ve lost count, but when the corporate media realize that the answers don’t support their pre-conceived smear narrative, they refuse to print the facts. No, I did not speak with Vladimir Putin. Nor did I receive any payment from Russia. Why has one reporter after another, after hearing these facts, decided not to publish them? Why do they choose instead to encourage sensational conspiracy thinking based on a photo?

This transparent campaign of neo-McCarthyism perfectly demonstrates why Americans’ trust in mass media has plummeted to an all-time low.

This is just the latest in a long line of smear campaigns from the corporate media. For a look at the many desperate attempts to discredit our grassroots movement, check out our “Haters Gonna Hate” page debunking the smears.

It’s time to withdraw our trust and support from these masters of misinformation, and put our resources towards building independent, non-corporate people’s media to provide the truthful information we need to create the future we deserve.

Meanwhile, the fact that Democratic apologists are attacking us outside of an electoral campaign is a great sign. We have become a force to contend with and they are rightly worried. The American people are clamoring for a new way forward and together, we're creating a future whose time has come, that puts people, planet and peace over profit.

And then there was Dr. Cornel West, who supported Dr. Stein in the 2016 presidential election and had supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016  Democratic primaries.  He went on Bill Maher's HBO talk show a couple of weeks after Maher criticized him and others for supporting Dr. Stein at Hillary's expense.   Although Dr. Stein never came up in the tête-à-tête that resulted over the election results, it is worth watching and Dr. West's comebacks should be taken quite seriously.  Here is the video of that exchange.

Peace, bro.

Maher's Attacks

Bill Maher used his "Real Time" show this past Friday night to take Jill Stein supporters to task for voting for the Green Party presidential nominee instead of Hillary Clinton.  He made the argument that if the had not been such "liberal purists," they wouldn't be bitching about Neil Gorsuch, Scott Pruitt, or his tyrannical executive orders.

Uh, yeah . . . let's remember a few things about the election:

Hillary Clinton lost because she failed to carry Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  If every Stein voter in those states had voted for Hillary, she would have won Wisconsin and Michigan but not Pennsylvania, and Trump would still have won.

I voted for Jill Stein.  I live in New Jersey.  Hillary won New Jersey with a majority.  My vote absolutely did not affect the outcome, and Maher's statement denigrates people who voted their conscience and took a big risk to help the Greens get federal funding for next time.

Dr. Stein came in fourth in the popular vote, with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson third.  Republicans and centrist and center-right independents who dislike Trump and who could have voted for Hillary - voters Hillary could have possibly won over - gave Johnson vote margins larger than Hillary's defeat margins in some states.  Why isn't Maher taking Johnson voters to task?     

Oh yeah, Maher told Stein backers - including Dr. Cornel West - to go f**k themselves.

Guess Dr. West won't be a guest on his show anymore.

Stein voters - and Johnson voters - are not to blame for Trump. Hilary is to blame for Trump because she was a lousy candidate.

Meanwhile, Hillary says she takes responsibility for loss while still deflecting blame for it to others.  Come on, Hillary, even your husband parses words better than that.

Go West, Young Voter

I'd like to share this donation letter released by the Jill Stein campaign from one of Dr. Stein's most prominent supporters, Dr. Cornel West:

I wholeheartedly support Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka. And I’m writing to you today to let you know, they have my endorsement - and I know they have your support as well.

You know, I’ve never been tied to one party or one candidate or even one institution. And that’s true even with one church as a Christian. I’m committed to truth and justice. I know you are, too.

I came late to the Green Party, but right on time; I was a tireless supporter and surrogate for Brother Bernie Sanders . . . he was the standard-bearer for truth and justice during the primary at a national level, at a highly visible level. Maybe you supported him, too.

But once he endorsed Hillary Clinton, I had to endorse Jill and Ajamu. Why? Because Hillary Clinton is a neoliberal disaster. What I mean by "neoliberal disaster" is someone who generates a mass incarceration regime, who deregulates banks and markets, who promotes chaos of regime change in Libya, supports military coups in Honduras, undermines some of the magnificent efforts in Haiti of working people, and so forth.

That’s the record of Hillary Clinton.

She’s an imperialist. She’s a militarist. She could take us into war with Russia. She could take us into war with Iran. I believe she’s dangerous in terms of her neoliberal ideology - not as a woman, because I’m supporting, of course, my dear sister Jill Stein.

Jill is not a spoiler. You know, a lot of people use that term "spoiler."

But truth is, If Hillary Clinton can’t make the case to progressives, she doesn’t deserve our vote. That's why I've put my time, my heart, my energy behind Sister Jill.

And I need you to go above and beyond for her today, so we can keep the movement she's part of, that I'm part of, rolling like a wave of thunder across the entire nation.

I implore you to make the biggest donation to the Stein-Baraka campaign as you can today. No donation is too small - think of the Widow's mite in the Bible -and no donation (up to $2700 per person) is too large.

You see, the campaign for Jill has grown exponentially and now needs about $17,000 a day to keep up through November 8. Our goal to start, is to raise $85,000 by midnight on Saturday (October 15). Will you help us?

We're currently falling behind in our fundraising. That's why I need you to give again today, as much as you can - even $10 would help.

Because of about 45,000 prophetic donors to her campaign, we've been able to build a progressive movement the likes of which the United States has never seen in modern times.

This is our year to dig in and make a real difference, to turn back the wave of neo-liberal policies that are killing black folk, women, prisoners, people of color, the poor and the dispossessed, and our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender sisters and brothers.

This is our year to make it clear that an alternative movement has taken hold and we won't quit until we see huge change. We will revolutionize the world.

The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.

This is our year to support Jill! In the language of Coltrane, Jill’s a major force for good, accenting the role of poor and working people being center stage.

Today, while this [letter] is in front of you, please give generously, as much as you can—to my Sister Jill Stein and Brother Ajamu Baraka.

It's up to us to turn back the forces of evil and work for the greater good.

As Sister Jill and Brother Ajamu say . . . it's in our hands.

Dr. Cornel West

I am not able to donate ten cents, never mind ten dollars, but I hope someone who is able to donate money and who doesn't get e-mails from the Stein campaign reads this letter from Dr. West  and acts accordingly.

To donate to Dr. Stein's campaign, go here.