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Oh No - Not another Nader [1]

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Date: 2023-06-05

I just read that Dr. Cornel West is announcing his candidacy for the 2024 Presidential race and is going to be on the ballot as “The Leftist People’s Party’. From Reuters:

(Reuters) - Cornel West, a progressive political activist and philosopher, announced on Monday that he is launching a third-party 2024 bid for the U.S. presidency. West said on Twitter that he was running for the White House with the small, leftist People's Party, "fighting to end poverty, mass incarceration, ending wars and ecological collapse, guaranteeing housing, health care, education and living wages for all!" West, 70, a prominent philosopher whose works have focused on race and class in U.S. society, enters the race with little hope of winning the White House but with a chance of siphoning votes from Democratic President Joe Biden in next year's election.

We can admire what Dr. West has done and is doing for equality, worker’s rights and democratic ideals. We can also hold admiration for what Ralph Nader did for consumer safety and automobile safety.

But running as a third-party candidate will be a disaster. In 2000, Nader received close to 100,000 votes in Florida, an election where, after SCOTUS put a stop to the recount, Bush won by under 1000 votes. Even if the Nader vote was split 51,000 to 49,000 in favor of Al Gore we would have had a different President. There is no chance that Nader took more votes from Bush than he did from Gore. Many people felt that H Ross Perot being on the ballot and taking right of center votes from H. W Bush enabled Clinton to win the Presidency in 1992. Third party candidates cannot win but they can sure impact the results.

In 2024, with so many toss-up states, especially states with significant Black populations, I can see West siphoning off thousands of votes from Biden. States like Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin can easily fall to the GOP if there is any other centrist, left of center or far left candidate on the ballot. Obviously RFK Jr is also trying to run and if both West and RFK are on the ballot alongside Biden and whomever gets the GQP nomination then it could spell a disaster for our country.

If there was a viable third-party candidate that could actually win that would be one thing. But these people are in it only for their ego and to get a platform for themselves and their views. They know that there is no change of them ever being elected to the Presidency. They seem willing to help the GQP in order to boost their own inflated egos.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/5/2173512/-Oh-No-Not-another-Nader

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