/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

I've never been terribly impressed by Cornel West in all honesty. He's basically a court jester: he communicates and composes himself like an anachronistic clown from the abolition era. Affluent elites call upon his spectacle when they want to prop themselves up as virtuous by association, but they have no interest in pursuing the working class agenda that West might want. I say "might" because most often the words that come out of West's mouth are vague platitudes and emotional appeals. Adolph Reed nailed it decades ago in his essay "“What Are the Drums Saying, Booker?” Elites come to West and his ilk when they need the mysterious language of a demographic they don't understand translated for them, but West himself is utterly ineffective at actually mobilizing working-class movements. It's very telling that the only demographic he has meaningful popularity among is white middle class liberals.

https://www.theobeers.com/reed-archive/drums-saying-booker/

>>471057

He is like 70, though. I mean, I don't know, maybe this stuff Adolph's talking about was more apparent in 1995, but you put Cornel West next to a Trump or a Biden now, and the guy really doesn't look that old or garish by comparison. I think that's at least funny.

Lol'd at this line about Gates tho:
He has since secured his public intellectuality in a series of essays in the New Republic and elsewhere whose main point is to endorse the “vital center,” and he extols the lost Jim Crow world in Colored People, a memoir that could have been titled Up from Slavery on Lake Wobegon.

Which one of these is Robert Kennedy Jr? Recovering dope fiend?

>Cornel "The Blacks must get Vaxed" West
yikes and cringe

>>471061

Yep!

>>471063
>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.
>Guarantee health care to all like every other major country on Earth.
>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.
>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.
>Get money out of politics and ban corporate lobbying.

Oh no, but he said he likes vaccines. Doesn't he know they cause autism?

>>471270
And Oprah's therapist = Guantanamo torturer?

>>471271
>He still believes in the spectacle
NGMI

>>471271
He's a Tom who went out in public and said that his own people should be injected with deadly poison. There's no way he can recover from that.

>>471285
no that's Rontanamo Bay Desantis

>hire notorious DNC operative responsible for smearing the left in previous elections as campaign manager
>leave Green primary to run as independent with a fraction of the ballot access… after joining the Green primary for their ballot access in the first place
This is one entertaining court jester. Nothing gives me more pleasure than watching people's misplaced respect in PMC "intellectuals" evaporate.

>>471056
I'm still voting for him despite what other people in this thread have said.

>>484961
Why though?

>>484962
I had wanted him to run for President for a long time. I think he's an exceptional candidate and even though he has no chance of winning I can't bring myself to vote for Kamala or Trump. Cornel best reflects my views.

>>484963
Why not a left candidate with an actual party behind them?

>>484964
I voted Biden in 2020 if Cornel was not running I'd vote for Kamala. But Cornel to me is an exceptional candidate I can't pass up this chance on voting for him it's like voting for Teddy Roosevelt in 1912.

>>484965
I like him too, but… come on. If Cornel wasn't running, the next closest would be Stein. I'd vote Stein, West, De la Cruz, or Oliver before I'd vote for Harris, and if Stein, West, De la Cruz, and Oliver weren't running I just wouldn't vote. Folks here will hate it, but I would actually have considered voting for Harris if she had used her leverage as the DNC's nominee to shut off the supply of free arms for the genocide. I would have considered it! I know she'd still have sucked, but I'm not interested in paying for the worst war crimes of this century, I would have really appreciated her ending that policy. Instead, she's doubled down on all the bad shit about Biden - the only advantage she has over Biden is her brain works, and she barely has that. She got the nomination and immediately pivoted away from "I'll be more moderate than Biden" to "look, everybody! One of the most despised men in America endorsed me! I'm going to blow up the world, woohoo!"
It's very concerning.

>>484965
>it's like voting for Teddy Roosevelt in 1912
Over Eugene Debs?

>>484965
>it's like voting for Teddy Roosevelt in 1912
The comparison is actually more on the nose than you probably realize. In the sense that Teddy's campaign in 1912 was another one of those celebrity campaigns relying entirely on the popularity and reknown of the candidate to generate excitement. Teddy's presidential run in 1912 was the closest anyone has ever gotten to breaking through the two-party system in the US. And what happened when he failed to win? His Progressive Party collapsed overnight. Eugene Debs's Socialist Party, on the other hand, thrived for about another decade as an organized grassroots party until they fractured in response to the Russian Revolution.

Cornel West is a celebrity candidate without even an organized party behind him, and much like Roosevelt, whatever "organization" he'll have built during his campaign is going to collapse the moment he loses.

Why would you support this kind of celebrity-oriented, in-the-moment electoralism when it has been a demonstrable failure over and over throughout US history?

>>484970
I prefer Roosevelt to Debs.

>>484971
Because like Roosevelt or Debs he is a candidate who I feel is exceptional. I don't care if his organization won't continue to live on. Because even if it did live on after his loss I doubt it'd ever be able to break through the two party system.

You know what would scare the shit out of the elites? If no one shows up to their "elections".

>>484975
>I prefer Roosevelt to Debs.
So you're not a leftist.