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Four Questions of the Culture War After the Campaign Announcement of Dr. Cornell West
1. How viable is Dr. West as a third-party candidate?
I was fortunate to meet Cornell West when he visited Penn State around 2016; having known nothing about him at the time, I was struck by how viscerally he resurrected the images of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, effectively combining the biblical fire-and-brimstone tonality of the former and the political fire-and-brimstone of the latter. Yes, the black people of America are a uniquely oppressed people-group, he asserted, but they are not the only such group, and the Democratic Party is as a "Good Master," happy to have blacks in their company, but always keeping minorities in their proper place.
If I, not a person of recent African descent by any measure, could be emotionally captured and intellectually moved by his lectures, how much more must they work on his target audience? And if his many soapbox sermons which are undoubtedly to come gain a viral following among both the subjugated races and those true believers of the Woke Ideology who didn't realize they weren't actually supposed to believe what they were told, I wonder if we might see a percentile impact beyond that of any similar candidate in recent memory, perhaps even chipping at that of Ross Perot. After all, Black Americans make up (as many a rightist could tell you) more than twelve percent of the populace; even a minority of that minority could shift the movement of greater tides.
2. Are viral speeches still the greatest arm in an Outsider Politician's arsenal?
Much - indeed, maybe all - of West's power in the 2024 presidential race rides on his ability to create viral bits of speechmaking; neither his fame nor his name are quite potent enough to make up for the steep paths he will have to traverse. Trump's impact in 2016 certainly had something to do with him simply being famous and not an established party member of either warring titan, but the viral bits of speechmaking really made the difference; even the gaffes were proof that he was getting under the enemy's skin. Perot, Sanders, and Nader had the speechmaking, but not the fame, name, or party acclaim (or, I suppose, the luck of going up against a detested old-timer). If speaking is still powerful in the future we're living in, then I suspect that West will fly high. I wonder, though, if his ideology might be a tad too grand to fit into TikTok bites and YouTube got-'em compilations, too academic for the vox populi, too rooted in the real history of the Civil Rights Movement to swim in heavily-chlorinated intellectual waters.
3. Will this campaign introduce trepidation in the academic veneration of Black Americans?
The 2024 presidential race will put the Ivy League in the uncomfortable position of having trained two detractors of their party-ideology; one who could be seen, easily enough, as a mistake of the distant past that has been corrected and overcorrected for in DeSantis, but another who, very inconveniently, took advantage of the scales balanced in his favor for the express purpose that he would strengthen their cause, then turned around and had the gall to openly disagree with them in West. Their mistakes in McWhorter and Sowell were repressed and erased to the best of their cultural ability, but West presents a new problem: he could actually, really kneecap their cause on the scope of national humiliation, with the enemy in 2024 being potentially far more potent than they were in 2016. One wonders if, with language undoubtedly lacquered in a thick veneer of "continued anti-racism and justice," the idea of sola pellis might be modified into something with a smaller, controllable aperture.
4. What new ideological platforms will be introduced to navigate the thorny task of denigrating a formerly sacred opponent?
While the Ivy League merely finds themselves in an uncomfortable corner, the Woke-Liberal-Progressive alliance will again be forced to test the unquestioned ideological "upgrade-ability" of their constituents with West in the race. While this has been deftly executed in the past, and the /r/politics clan sees no paradox in throwing West overboard, none of Cain/Powell/Rice/etc. had a substantial black following, certainly nothing that would have caused a ripple in the enemy camp. How, though, will the left respond to a candidate that can't be dismissed as "ain't black" or "white supremacist" due to the risk such a claim would run in alienating one of their prized demographics? The "single vote away from losing to fascism" rhetoric doesn't hold up as well as it used to, and I'm genuinely curious at the language that will be contorted, revised, or invented to solve this problem.
1). History has rarely been kind to third party candidates, there have really only been a few examples of a new political party or their candidate going anywhere. The two party system has relegated third party candidates as spoilers who often do little more than siphon votes from the candidate they have the most in common with.
2). I think going forward, the best way to get votes is to bypass the press, because the press really doesn’t cover candidates so much as races. They don’t show speeches, they talk about who’s ahead or behind or how a given speech sound-bite hurts them with a given demographic. YouTube lets you simply make a video and talk to people.
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How viable is Dr. West as a third-party candidate? Not at all. West will not receive media attention, will not raise significant amounts of money, will not be able to participate in debates, and will have problems even getting on the ballot in all 50 states. Third party candidates are deeply structurally disadvantaged, and Prof. West's constituency (elite liberal arts-educated radical progressives) is extremely small and niche to begin with.
Are viral speeches still the greatest arm in an Outsider Politician's arsenal? That depends on what the politician wants to achieve. If the politician wants to actually get elected, then money and an organized and motivated volunteer network is the sine qua non. If the politician just wants to make waves and land a cushy commentating gig after gallantly losing the election, then yes, viral speeches are where it's at.
Will this campaign introduce trepidation in the academic veneration of Black Americans? No, and why would it? West's been comfortably ensconced in elite academia for decades - he's as much responsible for that veneration as anyone. He's certainly not meaningfully challenging it.
What new ideological platforms will be introduced to navigate the thorny task of denigrating a formerly sacred opponent? None; they'll just ignore him.
Elite liberal rapid liberals are in cities and many of them are in media, no? Why wouldnt they cover him if they are sympathetic?
Because he'll be seen as a well-meaning but ultimately counter-productive distraction whose only possible impact would be skimming a percent or two off the Democrat's total. It's not like crank radical left candidates are a new phenomenon. He'll get the kid gloves treatment early on, with lots of favorable coverage to try to convince the Democrats that some of his radical ideas are more popular than they really are, then if/when it looks like he might actually have spoiler potential, the coverage will drop off a cliff as the media circles the wagons around Biden.
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You're definitely getting well ahead of yourself on this. He's not even the fourth biggest name going into what looks to be a crowded field of bombastic attention grabbers. The democratic party is almost certain to not even acknowledge his existence in any large way.
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I guess he’s not viable as third party candidate but if he runs isn’t he guaranteed to sabotage the Dems? I see no situation where 2024 isn’t a close election. The partisan splits now seem to guarantee it and 2016, 2020, and 2022 were all very close across the board.
The Dems do seem to need something new to enter their party. I don’t see young leaders energy for them other than maybe AOC while the GOP have options besides nominate old guy. Like Ted Cruz who won’t get close to the nomination is still not ancient and would be on-brand for conservatives. I can’t think of a Dem who does that for the left. There’s like maybe Newsome a (semi) rich good looking white kid.
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As viable as any other third party candidate, which is to say not at all. Like, what is the group of people that (1) West appeals to more than Trump or Biden and (2) constitutes a majority of voters in sufficient states to win those states and the election? I submit there is no such constituency.
Probably? I suspect one of the biggest issues for Outsider Politicians is a lack of name recognition. Those Outsider Politicians that have been the most successful are those (like Perot and Trump) that had the most name recognition from before their candidacy. Viral speeches are one way for candidates to get their names out there.
Wat. The Ivy League has trained a hell of a lot more than two detractors of their "party-ideology!" Including several actual Presidents who were arguably opposed to their ideology. Why would Cornell West running for President (winning or not) change anything?
There won't be any because it won't be necessary. The likelihood that West gathers the requisite support that doing anything to oppose him is necessary is remote. They'll just ignore him like basically every other third party candidate.
I think most of your points are spot-on. However, I think I don't quite agree with this:
There is a small-but-not-vanishingly-small chance that West could play spoiler in the general election. In 2016 and 2020, the election outcome could have been flipped by changing a relatively small number of votes in a few key states, such as Wisconsin. Here "relatively small" means something like 30,000, which, for reference, is about 1% of the Wisconsin electorate. It doesn't seem impossible that West, if he really ends up participating in the general election, would be able to get 1% of the vote in key states. I think it's not too likely and it's also likely that in a close election between Trump and Biden, West would exit the race rather than play spoiler. But I don't think it's impossible.
Also recall that when another West ran for president in 2020, the Democratic party took active steps to try to prevent him from appearing on the ballot in Wisconsin for fear that he would hurt Biden's chances there.
I largely agree. I guess I was thinking of opposing him in the sense he had a viable path to victory. I agree the potential to play spoiler is much higher.
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He isn't. As you admit yourself, the man isn't particularly well-known outside of intellectual circles, and even within them he's revered not so much for his specific politics but for his ability to communicate his opinions in a way that's interesting and engaging, not just about politics but about anything from religion to jazz. The great mass of left-leaning minorities aren't the kind of people who are going to listen to Dr. West engage in a 2-hour long discussion with Andrew Sullivan; like the great mass of people in general, they're the kind who are likely to not pay much attention to specific politics at all but know they always vote for their party, and know that third parties don't have a chance.
Maybe, but only if they're running in an established primary. Sanders was. Nader wasn't, but he was already famous before he ran for president (he appeared on Sesame Street, of all things, in 1988, singing the classic "A Consumer Advocate Is a Person in Your Neighborhood). Perot was the exception, but he wasn't so much an inspiring speaker as he was a policy wonk who had a lot of charts and graphs and who had the novel strategy of running campaign infomercials on leased-access channels. Trying to get a YouTube clip to go viral isn't exactly a novel strategy. Perot was also unique in that he appealed about equally to Democrats as to Republicans, while it's hard to see many Republicans voting for West. I don't think a few clips of good oratory will be enough to catapult a third-party bid to relevance.
Given that West has no chance, the final two questions are moot.
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