The Choice
Dean Phillips, Cornel West, and others are dangerous for the Dems
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Issue #475 The Choice Thursday, January 25, 2024
I have railed against 3rd parties at least since 3rd-party candidate Ralph Nader took enough votes away from Democrat Al Gore, especially in Florida, that the election was sent to the Supreme Court that handed the election to Republican George W. Bush.
People tried to blame Al Gore, who didn’t even win his home state of Tennessee, for running a lackluster campaign, but Gore still won the popular vote by more than 1/2 million votes. It was the razor-thin contest in Florida of 537 votes that cost Gore the election, and that was because of 3rd-party candidates such as Ralph Nader and others.
Most notably, in 2016, there was a concerted effort to demonize and discount highly qualified Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and far too many people decided to vote 3rd-party or vote “their conscience,” leading to an Electoral College win for Donald Trump even though Hillary garnered over 3 million more popular votes.
Jill Stein of the Green Party and Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party both pulled enough votes from Hillary to cause her to lose the Electoral College. Many Bernie Sanders supporters also sat out the election, blaming the DNC for not supporting him, even though Bernie is not a Democrat and the DNC had no obligation to support a non-Democrat. But even well-known people like actress Susan Sarandon and Professor Eddie Glaude, Jr. encouraged people not to vote for Hillary in 2016.
Today, independent candidates like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Dr. Cornel West, and Green Party Candidate Jill Stein could conceivably peel away enough votes from Joe Biden to cost him Electoral College votes in swing states and give the election to Donald Trump or another Republican like Nikki Haley.
While I can understand why non-major party candidates strongly believe in their causes, there is never a way for them to win enough Electoral College votes (a minimum of 270 votes) to win the presidency. Additionally, the U.S. government runs on more than just the president, and these 3rd party and independent candidates show no interest in building their parties or influence in local and state elections or legislative seats where the actual work of the government is done. The president actually has the least “power” of the three branches of government, something too many people do not realize.
This year, there is also a so-called Democrat, Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who believes that incumbent President Joe Biden is too old to be an effective president and should be contested in the primaries. Phillips has been running a quixotic campaign trying to challenge Biden, claiming that only he, Phillips, can win against Donald Trump.
Unsurprisingly, not only to Phillips fail to meet the deadlines to register for some of the Democratic primaries, but he lost 3-1 in the New Hampshire primary where Joe Biden wasn’t even on the ballot, yet won with 67% of the vote solely through write-in votes. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson together received less than 25% of the Democratic votes. Phillips continues to bash President Biden and has pledged to keep going, even though hardly anyone even shows up for his rallies and events. He has accepted millions of dollars from people like Harlan Crowe and Bill Ackman, who persuaded Phillips to scrap his support for DEI initiatives.
Neither Phillips nor Williamson will garner enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination at the August convention, but their continued attempts at portraying Joe Biden as a failed president and candidate could have negative ramifications.
Dr. Cornel West, on the other hand, started running as a member of the People’s Party, then the Green Party, and then finally switched to becoming an independent candidate like Robert Kennedy, Jr. West is still mad that he did not receive a special invitation from President Barack Obama for the 2009 Inauguration! He is a Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, holds degrees from several prestigious universities, and has published several books. The policies he touts on his presidential website are almost exactly the same as the Democrats, yet West feels that he and only he can “break the stranglehold” of the two major political parties and evolve into a viable alternative to President Biden. As an independent, he has quite an uphill climb to gather enough signatures to appear on the ballots of all 50 states.
West has a very annoying habit of calling everyone (even Trump!) “Brother” or “Sister,” thinking that endears him to the regular folk. However, it comes across as very disingenuous and phony. At his events, he speaks from a place of a far-left progressive, but that’s all he does: talk. He has no way to implement any of the “changes” he espouses because he has no down-ballot following at all.
Because of the Electoral College requirements, if Joe wins Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, he wins the election. If he loses the electoral votes of any of those three states because of these 3rd-party or independent candidates who can never win the election, then Trump or another candidate wins as happened in 2016.
We cannot allow that to happen.
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