The Cornel West campaign, third parties, and the nature of the moment

The Left can't substitute self-expression for strategy

I have known Cornel West since 1972 when we met during my first year at Harvard. I have followed him over the years and felt, at points, that I could call him a friend. That said, his campaign for the presidency raises some very serious questions regarding both his judgment and what seems to pass for strategy—not only for West, but for many others on the Left and in the progressive movements. My views here are focused solely on his decision to run and on the campaign that he is conducting.

West claims that running as an independent candidate affords him “the opportunity and duty to deliver policy prescriptions incorporated by and for the people.” Yet West has no viable path to victory, least of all a plan for governance; the notion that he could “deliver” on policy is simply not credible. As I will argue, West’s Quixotic campaign replaces the struggle for power with the politics of self-expression. This, fundamentally, is a politics of frustration. While the sentiment is understandable, the stakes are simply too high for leftists and progressives to succumb to such fatalism. We must organize around this election as if our lives and our futures depend on it—because they do. 

Are progressives interested in winning, and if so, what do they want to win?

Since the late 1970s, progressives have been largely fighting a rear-guard defensive battle against the assaults from capital and the increasingly brazen political right. The public has observed the morphing of a conservative movement into a rightwing populist movement with fascist or post-fascist tendencies. Though there have been successful defensive fights and periodic offensive victories by progressives—for instance aroundLGBTQ issues—the tendency has remained one of a strategic defensive.

In this context, a few things became noteworthy. First, an ideological reflection of the strategic defensive has been the victory of Reaganism through the ridicule and dismissal of collective action in favor of individual action and, indeed, individualism and entrepreneurialism. Even in progressive circles, the obsession with “brand” and individual achievement has become pronounced. This has worked its way into non-profit circles, where collective or joint action is rarely championed (or rewarded), whereas the uniqueness of each organization or network is applauded…until it is not. Everyone wants their ten minutes in the sun, even if it ultimately leads us nowhere.

Second, in this context, victories, when won, have increasingly become victories in form rather than substance. The victories of “representation,” in the sense of historically marginalized groups appearing to break through the glass ceiling, are a case in point. The most obvious example of this was the victory of Barack Obama in 2008 as president. It is not that the victory was without historic significance. Rather, the historic significance dwarfed discussions about program and action, particularly in the first year of his administration.

The net result of these developments—strategic defensiveness, symbolic victories, and brand identities—is that progressives have become used to losing. Losing can be glorious, after all. One can lose by oneself or with others. One can lose while “speaking truth to power.” One can lose and be remembered for having taken a heroic stand. Regardless, one loses.

The difficulty with winning, or at least attempting to win, is that it can be messy. Rarely do the advocates for a particular cause, demand, etc., win alone. Normally, victory necessitates alliances, and alliances necessitate compromise. As a result, there is no purity in winning, even if one wins exactly what one sought to win.

“Don Quixote fighting windmills,” Wikimedia Commons

As such, it is easier and more valiant to lose than it is to win. In losing, one can hold onto one’s conscience. One has said what needed to be said. One need not have made any compromises with those less pure. There can seem to be a consolation in such purism. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, one has still lost.

Winning necessitates strategy and organization. It is never about pronouncements alone. It involves the cultivation of a base that believes in and is prepared to sacrifice for a particular cause or demand. Winning, except under very unusual circumstances, necessitates the identification of tactical steps necessary to bring about victory. This might range from increasing pressure to building even broader alliances. Victory may come quickly, but normally not. It may, however, come suddenly, sometimes when one least expects it.

And winning must be secured. Once something has been won, it must not only be defended, but used as a launch pad for additional struggles and campaigns—all with the end of decisively defeating one’s opponents and liberating one’s base.

Politics of self-expression and frustration

Which brings us to the Cornel West campaign and other third-party bids during the 2024 election cycle. What is the essence of such ventures?

If one is interested in building a struggle for power, one does not begin by running a presidential campaign, and certainly not a campaign with no organized base and no possibility of victory. If, however, one is concerned more with asserting one’s beliefs and expressing one’s frustration and antipathy toward the existing system, one can view a campaign for the presidency as an ongoing platform to both hear oneself talk, and to try to captivate and entertain an audience. Such politics become, not the politics inherent in a struggle for power, but the politics of self-expression. The objective becomes expressing one’s views, anger, etc., rather than seeking to achieve anything. In effect, it becomes the politics of defeat, in that one has no plan, knows one cannot win, and therefore cries out in hopelessness.

The West campaign and other third parties will virulently object. They will assert they are taking a stand against the two-party system of the capitalist class, against imperialism, against the criminality of the US support for Israeli genocide. And they will be correct! They are. Yet, they have neither plan nor sufficient organization to transform their assertions into political power. Thus, they can only rely on magical thinking in the hopes—and this is a best-case scenario—that their plea to the masses will resonate and result in a great wave of revulsion against the system, thrusting them into office…alone.

Darrell Nance, “Cornell West” / CC BY-SA 4.0

The political moment

Leaving aside, for a moment, that minor parties in the USA have rarely been successful due to the undemocratic nature of the US electoral system, the actions of the Cornel West campaign and other third parties would be comical if less were at stake. And there have been times when comedians have run for president to make a satirical statement, such as Pat Paulsen.

Current third-party candidacies, including West and Jill Stein, either ignore or deny the dangers inherent in the current moment. West, for instance, acknowledges the dangers of a Trump victory but asserts, in part due to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, that there was no difference between Trump and Biden and, apparently, no difference between Trump and Harris. Stein’s views carry on from the historic and, unfortunately, dogmatic stand of the Green Party on the need for formal political independence from the two-party system.

None of them are coming to grips with the dangers on the horizon. There is nothing, for instance, on the Harris side that is comparable to the plans of the MAGA movement such as Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s hatched idea for a rightwing authoritarian overhaul of the US government. There is nothing comparable on the Harris side to proposals such as the American Legislative Exchange Council’s ongoing work to advance a Constitutional Convention to alter the US Constitution in favor of business and the Christian Right. Nothing.

One cannot conclude ignorance on the part of any of these campaigns. One cannot imagine that any of these campaigns believe that progressive politics and policies will survive a second Trump presidency. Or perhaps they do? As many of us have heard over the months, there are those who believe that Trump will not be so bad and, yes, there will be suffering, but we will come through it.

Who is “we”? Those picked up in military scoops of immigrants and placed in concentration camps? Those assaulted or killed should Trump utilize the 1807 Insurrection Act against protesters? Those killed through the use of paramilitary extrajudicial violence by fascist supporters of Trump? Workers who lose out when the National Labor Relations Board regresses to anti-worker animus, or when the National Labor Relations Act is eviscerated? Women, whose bodies increasingly become the terrain of rightwing male politicians? Or is the “we” those from the professional-managerial strata who believe they can hunker down and wait for the turbulence to subside?

The choice has never been between an enemy and one of us

The politics of self-expression makes four mistaken assumptions. First, that we can reject the two candidates and, by doing so, a third will ultimately emerge. Second, that an enlightened leader can emerge without an organized social base and, in the absence of support in Congress, introduce dramatic changes that will bring us closer to utopia. Third, that the two main candidates will demonstrate the corruption of the current system and will encourage the masses to turn in a revolutionary direction. Fourth, that a Trump victory will “punish” the Democrats such that in four years they will pick a better candidate.

What is striking about each of these notions is that there is no historical basis to see any of them happening. There are, however, plenty of examples where abstention, for instance, has created an opening for a nefarious political force to emerge and win office. In fact, one can look at Germany in 1932 to see one of the results of a failure to build a broad front to oppose the Nazis—because, in that case, the Social Democrats and the Communists so hated each other that they lost sight of what could happen should the Nazis win.

The second and fourth mistakes, however, are the ones that are the most interesting. The assumption that a third-party candidate could achieve anything in office, in the absence of organization at the base and any support in Congress, is mind-boggling. Consider the Obama administration and the difficulties it had in its first two years—when it had majorities but believed it could play adult with Republicans—not to mention what succeeded that after 2010. This thinking shows the absence of any conception of a fight for power. It is either magical, or it is yet another example that the politics of self-expression is the politics of defeat.

The fourth mistake is one that is heard frequently. It is less the politics of self-expression and more the acceptance of the permanence of the system and the inability to imagine that a politics can be constructed that goes beyond pleasing or punishing the existing parties, and instead offers an alternative based on real mass work, organization, and strategy.

Going forward

It is less important to get inside Cornel West’s head, or the heads of the other candidates, than it is to question not only their intent, but why they garner any attention. The answer is simple: frustration with the system; the fact that the lives of the majority of people are miserable; and a belief that regardless of what we do, nothing will change. Fundamentally, this apathy, frustration and pessimism leads to treating the November 2024 elections as if it is an election in American Idol—that is, entertainment where the result will be completely irrelevant to the daily lives of the viewers.

Those of us who appreciate the stakes in 2024 must use the coming weeks to point out precisely what the possibilities are. This is not an election between a hero and a demon. This is an election where a semi-fascist mass movement—MAGA—seeks to upend constitutional democracy in order to introduce rightwing authoritarianism. And this upending will be paradoxically quick as well as spaced out over time. That is the way authoritarians operate. They almost never clamp down on everyone at once, even in military coups. There are always parts of the population who believe—hope—they are exempt from repression. At least until there is that knock at the door…

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