Cornel West: right candidate, wrong party

West's association with the embarrassing, reactionary People's Party can only discredit left opposition to Democrats.

PHOTO CREDIT: Hrag Vartanian. Licensed under Creative Commons 2.0.

There is no sense in wasting everyone’s time with the obligatory praise of Cornell West and his extraordinary career — as an academic, and as an activist. Neither would it be useful to recount his political failures and errors in judgment. I am not writing this post as a referendum on West, who has announced today that he is running for President, and whose vision for America is vastly preferable to anyone else who has announced so far. If all you care about in a candidate is their personal politics and character, and have no interest whatsoever in the practical question of how their campaign is likely to play out, then you could do a lot worse than support Cornell West.

But if what you want is to build a mass movement against capitalism (and its ruling Democratic and Republican parties) then supporting West’s campaign with the Movement for the People’s Party would be a serious mistake. Three reasons: