On Monday, professor and activist Dr. Cornel West announced his 2024 presidential campaign “with the People’s Party, a third party led by a former campaign staff member for Senator Bernie Sanders,” Nick Brana.
In a campaign video posted to Twitter, West blasted both Democrats and Republicans. West said he made the decision to enter the race since “neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about Big Tech.” West didn’t spare jabs, calling out President Biden as a “milquetoast neoliberal” and former President Trump as a “neofascist.”
“In these bleak times, I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for president of the United States as a candidate for the People’s Party,” stated West, continuing, “I enter in the quest for truth, I enter in the quest for justice, and the presidency is just one vehicle to pursue that truth and justice – what I’ve been trying to do all of my life.”
West’s campaign website is already active, and boldly asserts an aggressive agenda, including: enacting congressional term limits, expanding Social Security, forgiving all student loan debt, disbanding NATO, guaranteeing healthcare, and tackling climate change.
West is a renowned Black scholar, author, and former professor at Yale, Princeton, and Harvard. The prolific thinker has penned best-selling books, such as Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America and Race Matters. West has been engaged with politics for many years, and is a former co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America Party. During the 2016 and 2020 elections, he was an ardent supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a self-proclaimed democratic socialist.
During President Obama’s tenure in the White House, West was frequently critical, including calling out the Obama administration’s use of drones. “We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people,” West said. “It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes.”
During the 2000 presidential election cycle, West served as a senior advisor on the Bill Bradley, former New Jersey senator, campaign. After Bradley lost the Democratic nomination to Al Gore, West pivoted and began supporting the Green Party’s Ralph Nader.
Pundits are already anticipating that West will receive criticism, like he did in 2000, when some believed Nader tipped the 2000 election to George W. Bush.
But as West explained, “We’re talking about affirming. We’re talking about empowering those who have been pushed to the margins,” handily stating, “Do we have what it takes? We shall see. But some of us are going to go down fighting, go down swinging, with style and a smile.”