Cornel West recently announced he is running for president as a Green Party candidate, challenging President Biden in 2024. Some Democrats worry that West’s candidacy could split the progressive vote and help reelect Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee again, as Jill Stein’s campaign did in 2016. However, West has supporters who see his run as a way to push Biden further left on issues. Still, even some progressives acknowledge West could hurt Biden’s chances of reelection. Democrats argue that beating Trump and enacting progressive policies requires electing Democrats first.
Jill Stein was an unknown then, and Trump was a novel threat. West has more name recognition, which is everything in politics. The Dems should be scared. But they should also not shit on the leftier end of their electorate constantly. Votes are earned, and no citizen owes their vote to any single party. When the Dems stop assuming the left will vote for their candidates because they don’t have electoral alternatives, maybe some will come out.
Also? Dems didn’t protect my bodily autonomy. I had to get parts of my body removed for full and equal citizenship. They had decades to codify Roe. I voted for Dems my whole adult life. All we got was endless fundraising letters. If the party can’t do their job, they should disband and let someone else do it, not bitch about leftist voters.
Vote for literally anyone other than Biden and you can kiss your bodily atonomy as well as all your other rights good bye. You realize you are basically saying fuck it let’s let the Nazis win because I didn’t get everything I wanted right. This line of thinking is suicidal.
Not really. There are a handfull of states where individual votes matter, in most others it will clearly be the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate due to over-votes.
We live in Oregon, it doesn’t matter who we vote for, the state is going to Biden.
My sister-in-law and her family live in Kansas, it doesn’t matter who they vote for, the state is going to whoever the Republican candidate is.
That’s not necessarily the case for folks living in Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin.
That’s only true if you believe the Dems will do something substantive. They had decades to figure out how to do that, they didn’t. I voted Dem since I turned 18, volunteered and worked on campaigns and GOTV efforts. And last year I had to have parts of my body removed so I could have bodily autonomy because of a Supreme Court where half the justices were selected by presidents who lost the popular vote. If voting worked, we wouldn’t be where we are. Vote Dem as a harm-reduction measure in your swing-state, 100%. But here in NYC, I can vote however I want in national elections, because it’s not like we’re going red.
I’m not suicidal. What you seem not to understand is that my stance is that the Nazis will win, either way, and we need to be preparing to fight that, not wasting our energy on the Dems, whose only functions seem to be slowing the pace of the destruction and serving to block people from making other electoral choices. If I were starting from the assumption that the Dems would make things better or even hold the line, as you do, yeah, my beliefs would be nuts. But our base premises here are different. Each thinks the other is delusional, and there’s no way to actually know until the future comes.