Clown Show Season

This is now the season where clowns who want publicity decide to “run for president.” That these clowns could end up handing the presidency back to Donald Trump doesn’t seem to matter to them. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is the main culprit right now, though at least he is running in the Democratic Primary I guess. Still, he is a horrible human being who hurts people through his idiocy. The worry here is that he’s a Kennedy and there are still a generation of aging Irish-Americans who will 100% vote for him based on his name. This includes some of my in-laws. In 2009, when Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State and Caroline Kennedy wanted the Senate seat that eventually went to Kirsten Gillibrand, my in-laws literally stated that Kennedy deserved it. I asked why and the answer is that she was a Kennedy.

Then there is the No Labels idiots like Joe Lieberman wanting to run someone. Even David Brooks and David Frum are using the pages of the New York Times to demand they stop trying to give the presidency back to Trump. I expect that the elite centrist world will probably force them into submission.

But today I want to talk about Cornel West, grifter extraordinaire. For years now, West has been trading on his fame for financial gain. And he has decided to run for president on a third party ticket. This one actually worries me a little bit because while West is a grifter, he speaks the language of the left as he also defends Ron DeSantis’s education policies. There’s plenty of those people on the left who just hate Democrats enough to vote for West.

While his hopes of becoming president are marginal at best, there is still a strong possibility that progressive activist Cornel West could have a major impact on the 2024 election.

West, 70, announced that he will be running for president next year as the Green Party’s candidate having previously declared his candidacy for the People’s Party nomination.

Any third party candidate is always going to struggle in a presidential election. However, having decided not to openly challenge Biden in a Democratic primary, West could still impact Biden’s reelection chances by pulling votes away from the president in key swing states.

Numerous polls have stated that voters do not want Biden to run for president again, citing concerns about his age and at times poor approval ratings. With the ballot now set to feature West—who previously endorsed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in both his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns—there is a chance that progressive voters now see the activist as a more suitable candidate.

….

“The critical difference between the 2024 election and the 2000 and 2016 election is the amount of negative partisan voting that we can expect to happen. Democrats are now more driven to vote against the Republican Party than voting for Democratic candidates, and vice versa,” Tamas told Newsweek.

“So, while there were a significant number of progressive voters in 2000 or 2016 who were willing to risk a Republican victory with a Green Party vote, widespread fear that Trump or another Republican president might undermine American democracy will likely make it very difficult for West to convince a substantial number of progressive voters to abandon the Democratic Party.”

Yeah, we will see. It’s true enough, but if two of every one hundred Biden voters make a different choice, it is going to be a very grim country indeed. West knows damn well what he is doing. He just doesn’t care. Bernie Sanders will be all in for Biden, but with a certain set of voters, it won’t matter.