There is A Spoiler Officially Challenging President Biden. Here’s Why We Need to Take That Seriously.

Photo by Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash

If Jill Stein hadn’t run for president on the Green Party ticket in 2016, Hillary Clinton would have been president.

If Ralph Nader hadn’t run for president on the Green Party ticket in 2000, Al Gore would have been president.

If Theodore Roosevelt hadn’t re-run for president on the Bull Moose party ticket in 1912, William Howard Taft would have been re-elected.

I love Dr. Cornel West.

I do not love he decided to run for president on the “People’s Party” ticket.

Apparently neither did he.

Because a mere two weeks after announcing his candidacy for the obscure People’s Party, West has already abandoned it for the republican-funded Green Party.

If he is sincere about “taking on the corporate duopoly” of republicans and Democrats—not a spoiler — he would run as a Democrat to the left of Joe Biden.

Running as a third party candidate will only serve to siphon off votes for President Joe Biden, thereby paving an easier path for the republican nominee, which could, believe it or not, be Donald Trump.

I doubt this is the outcome Dr. West wants.

Even Socialist publication Jacobin published a piece recently urging Dr. West to take the fight directly to President Biden as a Democrat.

Ben Burgis wrote:

I can hardly think of anyone I’d rather see replace the deeply mediocre Joe Biden as president of the United States — to, as West said in a recent appearance on Democracy Now!, become “the head of Empire to help dismantle it.”

Unfortunately, West is planning to run on the ballot line of an obscure third party. I doubt that as many as 1 percent of American voters even know that the “People’s Party” exists.

That’s a shame. West’s message is important, and if he’s going to spend the…