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The Race For 2024

Cornel West on Twitter: "I am running ..." / Twitter
I am running for truth and justice as a presidential candidate for the People’s Party to reintroduce America to the best of itself - fighting to end poverty, mass incarceration, ending wars and ecological collapse, guaranteeing housing, health care, education and living wages for all!

Join the movement at http://cornelwest24.com!!
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With video of his announcement and a link to Cornel West for President He is running as a candidate of the People's Party
I am running for truth and justice and as a candidate for president of the United States in the People’s Party. I want to reintroduce America to the best of itself – the dignity, courage, and creativity of precious everyday people. Join our movement for priceless poor and working people of all colors here and abroad.
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with a platform of
  • Create True Democracy - Clean out government corruption and create a true democracy. Get money out of politics and ban corporate lobbying. Enact term limits in Congress and switch to hand-counted paper ballots.
  • Revitalize Our Economy - Guarantee quality education, housing, a living wage, and paid leave to all. Curb inflation, support unions, and expand Social Security. Fix our infrastructure and forgive all student debt.
  • Medicare for All - Guarantee health care to all like every other major country on Earth. Ensure comprehensive care including dental, vision, hearing, mental, substance abuse, and long-term. Lower drug prices and abolish medical debt
  • End the Wars - Bring our troops home and invest those trillions of war dollars into American communities. Support veterans, stop all foreign military aid, close the bases, disband NATO, and ban nuclear weapons globally.
  • Expand Civil Liberties - Guarantee equal rights to all Americans. Restore free speech, press freedoms, and net neutrality. End surveillance, the drug war, and mass incarceration. Protect choice, stop CBDCs, regulate AI, and break up Big Tech.
Seems much like Bernie Sanders and Marianne Williamson.

Marianne Williamson 2024 | Official Presidential Campaign Website - goes into a lot of detail, and includes
  • An Economic Bill of Rights: A Vision for a Moral Economy
  • Whole Health Plan: The Cost of A Healthy America
  • U.S. Department: of Children & Youth
  • The Working Economy: Taking Back Our Democracy From Corporate Influence
  • Climate Action: Facing the Future
  • Reproductive Justice: One hundred percent pro-choice
Important Issues Facing America | Marianne 2024 - Animal Protection, Children, Climate Action, Crime Prevention, Criminal Justice, Disability Justice, Economy ,Education, Food Safety, Gun Safety, Health, Immigration Justice, Labor, LGBTQIA+ Rights, Mass Incarceration, Native American Justice, Pandemic & Long Covid Response, Peace, Poverty, Reparations, Reproductive Justice, Social Security, Student Plan, Women's Rights
 
ZiprHead said:
got to be delusional to think he has any sort of a chance. Or he's just grifting for the money.
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I think it's a combination of macho, grifting, and revenge.

Pence supported Trump even though Trump was the anti-Christian. Trump responded with a gallows for Pence.

I don't think Pence could even win here in Indiana. But, yeah, he can fuck things up. He can well spread truth, with names and dates and quotes, and he's got nothing to lose.
Tom
 
So why is Cornel West running in the People's Party? Why not the Green Party? Why not as an independent?

I remember following that party several months ago, but it seems to have stalled. It was trying to get ballot access in each state, but it was not trying to recruit and support candidates.

Cornel West Announces Presidential Bid … as a People’s Party Candidate | The New Republic - "Why did Cornel West, one of the eminent thinkers of our time, choose to run with this party?"
Cornel West is among the eminent thinkers and voices of our time. Speaking truth to power while synthesizing a politics driven by love and solidarity and care for those you share society with are hallmarks of West’s legacy. And that’s why it is puzzling that he has announced his campaign for president under the banner of the not so aptly named People’s Party.
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From his announcement statement,
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. 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.

I come from a tradition where I care about you. I care about the quality of your life, I care about whether you have access to a job with a living wage, decent housing, women having control over their bodies, health care for all, the escalating of the destruction of the planet, the destruction of American democracy. Democracy creates disruption. It creates an eruption. It creates an interruption wide from below, the energies of everyday people is manifest.
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TNR:
He carries a history of fierce advocacy for racial and economic equality, and a strong rejection of blaming material or social misery on the marginalized, as opposed to the elites and structural forces actually responsible.

And he is now running on a party ticket that purports to embrace similar ideals but has had trouble on the execution side of things. While the party began in 2017 with noble roots to form a new political party independent from corporate money and influence, it has been mired in troubling allegations, as well as broader organizational dysfunction.
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Its founder, Nick Brana, was a campaigner for Bernie Sanders in 2016, but he has numerous well-supported allegations of sexual harassment against him, and some fellow party leaders were forced out for wanting these allegations to be investigated.
Other former party volunteers and members have accused the party leadership of lacking democratic organizational processes, having opaque finances, and being generally disrespectful, manifesting sometimes in ableism and racism.

As of now, the People’s Party has ballot access in barely a handful of states. The party’s central website has little direction for those interested in joining the party’s effort to gain ballot access elsewhere, nor to organize and elect candidates on a local level. The policy platform includes six admirable goals, but with little more than a few sentences related to each plank.
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He could have run as a Green, because the Green Party does have some ballot access, or as a Democrat, like Bernie Sanders and Marianne Williamson.

Left-wing philosopher Cornel West launches long-shot 2024 presidential bid | Reuters

Cornel West Announces Third-Party Bid for President - The New York Times - "Dr. West said he would run as part of the People’s Party, which was founded by a former campaign staff member for Senator Bernie Sanders."
In the video, Dr. West said he had decided to run as a third-party candidate because “neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about Big Tech.” He called former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, a “neo-fascist,” and President Biden a “milquetoast neoliberal.”

Dr. West has taught at Yale, Princeton and Harvard and is currently a professor of philosophy at Union Theological Seminary. He is known for his progressive activism, including his sharp criticism of former President Barack Obama.

His campaign video emphasized a list of issues, including wages, affordable housing, abortion rights, universal health care, climate change and “the destruction of American democracy.”
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The People's Party?

Dan Rather on Twitter: "Make no mistake, if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, he would be stigmatized as “woke” and attacked accordingly." / Twitter
then
The People’s Party on Twitter: "No, MLK's words were the opposite of woke. Rather if he were alive today, he'd be stigmatized, smeared and canceled BY the "woke mob"" / Twitter
then
Jedi Ghost 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🇺🇦 on Twitter: "This is the party he just joined.
This one right here.
The one that says "MLK's words were the opposite of woke."
(link)" / Twitter

Then the People's Party tried to explain "wokeness" as faux-progressivism.
The People’s Party on Twitter: "@jonpq21 No, it doesn't. Wokeness was stolen by status quo actors and is now used by corporate and state power to wokewash their operations and keep working people from cooperating. Debates on moral recognition are no substitute for unity and mass action against poverty and imperialism." / Twitter
That's not a typical use of that word, however.

What is woke: How a Black movement watchword got co-opted in a culture war - Vox - "Stay woke: How a Black activist watchword got co-opted in the culture war."
But in 2014, following the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, “stay woke” suddenly became the cautionary watchword of Black Lives Matter activists on the streets, used in a chilling and specific context: keeping watch for police brutality and unjust police tactics.

In the six years since Brown’s death, “woke” has evolved into a single-word summation of leftist political ideology, centered on social justice politics and critical race theory. This framing of “woke” is bipartisan: It’s used as a shorthand for political progressiveness by the left, and as a denigration of leftist culture by the right.
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Some podcasters on Cornel West's odd choice of party:
All three like him, and all three of them find that move baffling.

DD noted a lot of negative responses to this choice of party, and KB noted that CW's candidacy may be much like Jill Stein's, an attempt to push the Democratic Party to the left. KK said that he would not vote third party as long as Presidential elections are first-past-the-post. But if such elections are changed to ranked-choice voting, he would eagerly support the Greens, because RCV allows having the Dems as a fallback. KB and KK agreed that it would be better to run in the primaries, what Bernie Sanders did.

Cornel West announces he's running for president - POLITICO
West is known for his academic activism. He is the former professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University and professor emeritus at Princeton University.

...
West first left a Harvard position in 2002 amid a series of disputes with then-university president Lawrence Summers, joining Princeton University instead. In 2021, West again left a Harvard post over a tenure dispute, accusing the school of “intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths.” He is currently the the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary.
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Chris Christie kicks off 2024 campaign with sharp attacks on Trump | CNN Politics
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie kicked off his second presidential campaign on Tuesday with a lacerating indictment of former President Donald Trump, calling his ally-turned-rival a “lonely, self-consumed mirror hog” who, by force of personality alone, represents a threat to the republic.

At a town hall event in New Hampshire, Christie – who endorsed Trump after dropping out of the 2016 primary and then became a close adviser to the former president ahead of the 2020 election – described his past support as an error and urged Republicans to join him in rejecting the GOP front-runner.

“Beware of the leader in this country, who you have handed leadership to, who has never made a mistake, who has never done anything wrong, who when something goes wrong it’s always someone else’s fault. And who has never lost,” Christie said of Trump.
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Half an hour later,
“I can’t guarantee you success, but I can guarantee you that at the end of it, you will have no doubt in your mind who I am and what I stand for and whether I deserve it,” he said. “That’s why I came back to New Hampshire to tell all of you that I intend to seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States in 2024.”
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Trump won't be taking that very well, I'm sure.
 
I've admired Cornell West for many years, as the extremely intellectual, interesting person he is, but what the fuck does Brother West think he will accomplish by running for president, other than to take votes away from the Dems and make it easier for the Repugs to win? Has he become delusional? Maybe he won't get enough support to get on the ballot other than in a few blue states. Maybe he's simply hoping to push the Dems to the Left a bit. I'm just perplexed why an academic who has never held a political position, and who is at least as far left as Bernie, thinks running for president at this particular time is going to be helpful.
 
southernhybrid said:
I've admired Cornell West for many years, as the extremely intellectual, interesting person he is, but what the fuck does Brother West think he will accomplish by running for president, other than to take votes away from the Dems and make it easier for the Repugs to win? Has he become delusional? Maybe he won't get enough support to get on the ballot other than in a few blue states. Maybe he's simply hoping to push the Dems to the Left a bit. I'm just perplexed why an academic who has never held a political position, and who is at least as far left as Bernie, thinks running for president at this particular time is going to be helpful.
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Cornell West has always struck me as something of a political spoiler. He backed Bernie Sanders in 2016, but he switched to Jill Green's quixotic campaign, when Sanders lost. He knows he can't win the presidency as the candidate of an obscure third party, but he helped Donald Trump get elected in 2016. He either hasn't learned his lesson from that disaster, or he doesn't really care. It is all about getting attention for himself.
 
Pence opens presidential bid with denunciation of Trump over Jan. 6 insurrection and abortion | AP News
Former Vice President Mike Pence opened his bid for the Republican nomination for president Wednesday with a firm denunciation of former President Donald Trump, accusing his two-time running mate of abandoning conservative principles and being guilty of dereliction of duty on Jan. 6, 2021.

... While he spent much of his speech criticizing Democratic President Joe Biden and the direction he has taken the country, he also addressed Jan. 6 head-on, saying Trump had disqualified himself when he declared falsely that Pence had the power to keep him in office.

Trump’s statements about mass voting fraud led a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol, sending Pence and his family scrambling for safety as some in the crowd chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”

“I believe anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States, and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United Sates again,” the former vice president said.
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Finally, finally, finally, willing to push back against someone who seemed happy about a lynch mob coming after him.

He also slammed Trump for betraying conservative principles, like not being anti-abortion enough.
Pence, who supports a national ban on the procedure, said, “After leading the most pro-life administration in American history, Donald Trump and others in this race are retreating from the cause of the unborn. The sanctity of life has been our party’s calling for half a century — long before Donald Trump was a part of it. Now he treats it as an inconvenience, even blaming our election losses in 2022 on overturning Roe v. Wade.”
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Then,
Pence also bemoaned the current politics of “grudges and grievances,” saying the country needs leaders who know the difference between the “politics of outrage and standing firm.”

“We will restore a threshold of civility in public life,” he pledged
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He also says that we should not rule out cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and he strongly criticized fellow R's who are unwilling to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.
 
One Trumpie's response:
“The question most GOP voters are asking themselves about Pence’s candidacy is ‘Why?’” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for a Trump-backing super PAC.
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Pence announces 2024 presidential campaign | CNN Politics
At his formal campaign kickoff in Ankeny, Iowa, Pence recalled how Trump had asked him to block the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win as Pence presided over Congress on January 6, 2021.

“The American people deserve to know, on that day, President Trump also demanded I choose between him and the Constitution. Now voters will be faced with the same choice. I chose the Constitution, and I always will,” Pence said to applause from the crowd at Des Moines Area Community College.

“I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States. And anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again,” the former vice president said of his onetime boss, currently the front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination.

In remarks that ran a little over half an hour, Pence, who had been a loyal second-in-command to Trump prior to January 6, maintained that he was “incredibly proud” of the Trump-Pence administration’s “accomplishments,” before explaining why he was challenging his onetime ticket mate.

“The former president continues to insist that I had the right to overturn the election. President Trump was wrong then, and he is wrong now. I will always believe, by God’s grace, I did my duty on that day, I kept my oath, to ensure the peaceful transfer of power under the Constitution and the laws of this country,” he said.

“I stand before you today as a candidate for president to say to the Republican Party, the Republican Party must be the party of the Constitution of the United States,” he said.
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His campaign's launch video:
Mike Pence on Twitter: "I believe in the American people, and I have faith God is not done with America yet. Together, we can bring this Country back, and the best days for the Greatest Nation on Earth are yet to come! 🇺🇸 #Pence2024 (vid link)" / Twitter

Back to CNN.
In the video – which makes no mention of Trump and features no images of the former president – Pence argues that “different times call for different leadership” and that the nation needs a leader “that will appeal, as Lincoln said, to the better angels of our nature.”

“We can bring this country back. We can defend our nation and secure our border. We could revive our economy, and put our nation back on a path to a balanced budget, defend our liberties and give America a new beginning for life,” the former vice president says.
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Balancing the Federal budget? Even though Democrats have been much better at balancing the Federal budget than Republicans over the last 40+ years: New data shows Biden delivering on deficit-reduction boast
 
Another Republican is running for president: meet Doug Burgum : NPR
That said, Burgum enters the race with a handful of recent legislative wins that align with the far-right conservative base he's looking to attract.

In April, he signed a near-total abortion ban that only allows for exceptions within the first six weeks of pregnancy. He also ushered through a series of bills that curb the rights of transgender people, including legislation that criminalizes gender-affirming care for children under 18 years old.

Burgum's wealth could also be a factor in his campaign. He has indicated he may partially self-finance his run, putting him in the same camp as businessman and primary opponent Vivek Ramaswamy, the only other major candidate to report self-contributions.

Both longshot candidates join a long line of affluent businessman-turned-politicians who have poured personal funds into their campaign bids — which have been largely unsuccessful in recent major elections.
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Not many business leaders have been elected President, and those that have been elected President have not been very good Presidents.
 
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum announces 2024 bid for president | CNN Politics
“To unlock the best of America, we need a leader who’s clearly focused on three things: economy, energy and national security,” Burgum said during a speech in Fargo, North Dakota. “And that is why today I’m officially announcing I’m running for the president of the United States of America.”

...
Burgum told a North Dakota newspaper last month that there was a hunger for candidates not seen as extremists.

“All the engagement right now is occurring on the edge,” he told The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. “There’s definitely a yearning for some alternatives right now.”

He also told the newspaper he sees value in being underestimated, calling it a “competitive advantage.”
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It's their mess, and they should clean it up. That's what they get for seeming to have a deep love of Donald Trump.

As to being underestimated, AOC has noted that about her first campaign, how she let incumbent Joe Crowley's campaigners believe that she was insignificant.
Burgum has a conservative track record as governor, signing a bill this year that bans gender-affirming care for most minors and enacting a near total-ban on abortions in the state. He set a goal in 2021 for North Dakota to be “carbon-neutral” by 2030 and discussed opportunities for meeting the nation’s energy needs in a sustainable way with U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

...
“This year we achieved pension reform, helped pass term limits, and enacted the biggest tax cut in state history,” he wrote. “I can do the same for America. The U.S. has the hardest-working people in the world. But we need new leadership to unleash our potential.”
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He has a bachelor's degree in "university studies" from North Dakota State University and an MBA from Stanford University. He worked as a senior vice president in  Great Plains Software an accounting-software company that was bought by Microsoft. He then founded real-estate-development firm Kilbourne Group and co-founded venture-capital firm Arthur Ventures.

He is now in his second term as North Dakota governor.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum joins 2024 presidential race against Trump, DeSantis - ABC News
"We need new leadership for the changing economy. We need a leader who understands the real work that Americans do every day," Burgum said at a campaign kickoff event in Fargo, North Dakota on Wednesday.

"Someone who's worked alongside our farmers, our ranchers and our small business owners; someone who's held jobs where you shower at the end of the day, not at the beginning," he said.

To cheers, he said, "We need a leader who's clearly focused on three things: economy, energy and national security."
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