2024 Third Party and Independent Candidate General discussion

[Vosem]

Assuming he actually makes it on a non-negligible number of ballots (and it's early enough that he can), then he is distinctly a more serious left-wing third-party spoiler than anyone who ran in 2020. Hard to say if he does better than Stein '16, but I think he's well-known enough that it's not out of the question.

[Unbeatable Titan Susan Collins]

Honestly given the issues with the Libertarian Party I could see him coming in 3rd.

[Suburbia]

Biden should fear this because West will take some black votes.....in Atlanta, Detroit, Philly, Milwaukee this may be crucial

[GeneralMacArthur]

I seriously thought the People's Party would never be relevant again so I stopped keeping track of all the horrible facts about it.

It was originally just the Sanders 2020 campaign minus Bernie Sanders himself, keeping the flame alive as a vehicle for grifting money and attacking elected Democrats.  Then their online presence (primarily a Twitter account) got steadily more and more insane in a desperate attempt to stay relevant as former Bernie superstars like Nina Turner and Ryan Knight faded into irrelevance, while those who stayed relevant (like Jimmy Dore) abandoned any notion of caring about their party.

I guess this Cornel West run is the latest attempt to try and keep some semblance of pretending to be a real organization.  Do you think Jimmy Dore will introduce him at his campaign events?  Or will he stick to Shaun King, the Gravel teens, and that one university professor who really loves Putin?

It's also weird because Marianne Williamson was the main non-Bernie-alum in the People's Party and in case you haven't heard, she's also running for president.

[Unbeatable Titan Susan Collins]

Cornell West in for People's Party.

https://twitter.com/CornelWest/status/1665743761551548416

[Lief 🗽]

West went out of his way to support “Brother Trump” in 2016, so it’s not surprising that he’s working to get him elected again. Horseshoe Theory remains one of the most important political science theories in modern politics.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Btw speaking of Bernieworld grift operations I just checked the Sanders Institute page out of curiosity and Tulsi has in fact been removed!  They also added an obituary for Harry Belafonte in April.  So someone is still updating this totally defunct site for some reason.  Which begs the question of why Shaun King is still prominently featured as a Sanders Institute Fellow.

[Pheurton Skeurto]

Wow, that's shocking. Of course I am suspicious of the motives here given that he's running for the People's Party, which as we know is comprised of grifters and general ne'er-do-wells. Still though, he is certainly one of the better voices in the modern progressive movement. I don't expect he will do well enough to swing the election, despite the hand-wringing that has been and will continue to be done in this thread.

[PSOL]

I’d never thought I’d report on the People’s Party again but here we are

[PSOL]

Assuming he actually makes it on a non-negligible number of ballots (and it's early enough that he can), then he is distinctly a more serious left-wing third-party spoiler than anyone who ran in 2020. Hard to say if he does better than Stein '16, but I think he's well-known enough that it's not out of the question.

There is no such thing as a “spoiler candidate”. And it’s not like Cornel West is major in any way, he’s less relevant in actual terms compared to the Green party’s candidate or PSL/P&F nominee thanks to their GOTV machines among other variables.

Anyway, someone merge this in the third party thread.

[Holmes]

Biden should fear this because West will take some black votes.....in Atlanta, Detroit, Philly, Milwaukee this may be crucial

Yeah just like Trump should fear white third party candidates because they'll siphon white votes away from him.

[Mopsus]

Biden should fear this because West will take some black votes.....in Atlanta, Detroit, Philly, Milwaukee this may be crucial

He’ll take about as many black votes as Kanye West did in 2020. He might take my vote though, just like Kanye did.

[Galeel]

West went out of his way to support “Brother Trump” in 2016, so it’s not surprising that he’s working to get him elected again. Horseshoe Theory remains one of the most important political science theories in modern politics.

Horseshoe theory only seems real to you because you refuse to engage seriously with people on the left and have a caricatured view of us.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I'd actually pay money to see a Williamson vs RFK jr. vs West debate where they try to out-Putin each other.

[Vosem]

Biden should fear this because West will take some black votes.....in Atlanta, Detroit, Philly, Milwaukee this may be crucial

He’ll take about as many black votes as Kanye West did in 2020. He might take my vote though, just like Kanye did.

He has time to get on significantly more ballots than Kanye did, and my guess is that Kanye's treatment provides a lower floor on how seriously Cornel gets taken by the electorate.

(And that is a low floor indeed, to be sure.)

[Mr. Smith]

Assuming he actually makes it on a non-negligible number of ballots (and it's early enough that he can), then he is distinctly a more serious left-wing third-party spoiler than anyone who ran in 2020. Hard to say if he does better than Stein '16, but I think he's well-known enough that it's not out of the question.

You think Howie Hawkins wasn't serious?

[Vosem]

Assuming he actually makes it on a non-negligible number of ballots (and it's early enough that he can), then he is distinctly a more serious left-wing third-party spoiler than anyone who ran in 2020. Hard to say if he does better than Stein '16, but I think he's well-known enough that it's not out of the question.

You think Howie Hawkins wasn't serious?

Here are the popular vote percentages for the top two left-wing third-party options by year, in my lifetime:
2020:
Hawkins 0.26%
La Riva 0.05%

2016:
Stein 1.06%
La Riva 0.05%

2012:
Stein 0.36%
Barr 0.05%

2008:
Nader 0.56%
McKinney 0.12%

2004:
Nader 0.38%
Cobb 0.10%

2000:
Nader 2.74%
Hagelin 0.08%

1996:
Nader 0.71%
Hagelin 0.12%

1992:
Fulani 0.07%
Hagelin 0.04%

...Hawkins was the weakest top left-wing third-party candidate since the 1992 cycle! I think if West really doesn't do any better than 0.26%, then either his ballot access operation really face-planted or Biden is the most popular President among left-wing Americans in my parents' lifetime.

(Which is possible, but I keep hearing that the reason for his low approval ratings is that there's disapproval from the left. If that is true, then this kind of campaign is obviously a threat. If it isn't -- and frankly I think the evidence is very lacking -- then this campaign is kind of a curiosity, but it also implies that Trump or DeSantis have pretty good odds of beating Biden.)

[ꙮ]

Surely the 13th completely irrelevant leftist splinter group with negligible ballot access will make a huge impact, even though the first 12 didn't. I could see this warranting some attention if it were a merger of existing groups, but as it stands this is yet another group starting from scratch with no ballot access splitting the already tiny pool of socialist voters in the US.

As far as leftist third parties go, there's already:

Green Party
Party for Socialism and Liberation
Peace and Freedom Party
Socialist Workers Party
Socialist Party USA
Socialist Alternative
Socialist Equality Party
Socialist Action Party
Working Class Party
and then like a dozen others which no longer run candidates but claim not to be defunct.

[Vosem]

Surely the 13th completely irrelevant leftist splinter group with negligible ballot access will make a huge impact, even though the first 12 didn't.

I think the argument is that West himself is well-known and therefore might get more votes than some activist nobody has ever heard of, not that the outfits that will promote him are particularly relevant. Nader's campaigns in 2004 and 2008 didn't really leave a trace in terms of organization, but they both at least did better than Hawkins 2020.

[AltWorlder]

lmao the Libertarians, Greens, and Constitution Parties collapsing ftw. Guess it’s time for some wandering in the wilderness.

West running will split the already niche-leftist but neither Green nor socialist niche that Marianne Williamson and RFK Jr. already occupy, so that’s both interesting and amusing.

It feels like a return to the days when Nader or Cynthia McKinney were headlining the Greens except there’s somehow three different semi-household names canceling each other out.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Surely the 13th completely irrelevant leftist splinter group with negligible ballot access will make a huge impact, even though the first 12 didn't.

I think the argument is that West himself is well-known and therefore might get more votes than some activist nobody has ever heard of, not that the outfits that will promote him are particularly relevant. Nader's campaigns in 2004 and 2008 didn't really leave a trace in terms of organization, but they both at least did better than Hawkins 2020.

Is West really that well-known though? He seems a lot less present in media than he was 5-10 years ago, and the People's Party has always been somewhere between a vanity project by its founders and an irrelevant joke.

[Vosem]

Surely the 13th completely irrelevant leftist splinter group with negligible ballot access will make a huge impact, even though the first 12 didn't.

I think the argument is that West himself is well-known and therefore might get more votes than some activist nobody has ever heard of, not that the outfits that will promote him are particularly relevant. Nader's campaigns in 2004 and 2008 didn't really leave a trace in terms of organization, but they both at least did better than Hawkins 2020.

Is West really that well-known though? He seems a lot less present in media than he was 5-10 years ago, and the People's Party has always been somewhere between a vanity project by its founders and an irrelevant joke.

I think he's better-known than Howie Hawkins or Gloria La Riva (or actually, even Jill Stein before her campaigns); he's a frequent-ish guest on news podcasts and I see him asked to comment occasionally in news articles. I don't think he's that well-known overall, but the bar here is extremely low and he seems to pretty clearly meet it.

[AltWorlder]

He was in the Matrix sequels, have some respect

[Vice President Christian Man]

West went out of his way to support “Brother Trump” in 2016

Citation?

[LostInOhio]

If Bernie and AOC endorsed and campaigned for him then Democrats could be in serious trouble as he’d become the de facto leftist candidate. However Bernie has already endorsed Biden and AOC seems to be getting cozier with the “establishment” lately so I doubt West will gain much traction. 

Then again I said the same thing about Bernie in 2016 and the Left doesn’t seem too happy with Biden, so it could get messy if he does something to piss them off. Even him just poaching one or two million votes from Biden could result in a loss.