Cornel West enters the 2024 presidential election

The 70-year-old leader said he is running for the nomination as a member of The People’s Party, a left-wing political party that dates back to the 1890s.

Activist, theologian and academic Cornel West announced Monday that he is running for president in 2024 as a third-party candidate.

“In these times, I have decided to run for truth and justice,” West said in a video released on social media.

The 70-year-old leader said he is running for the nomination as a member of The People’s Party, a left-wing political party that dates back to the 1890s.

West, a longtime political activist who has been critical of Republicans and Democrats over the years, mentioned President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump – the likely Democratic and Republican 2024 presidential nominees – in his pitch to voters and positioned himself as an alternative candidate.

“We’re talking about empowering those who have been pushed to the margins because neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about big tech,” said West. 

The campaign ad includes comments West made about Trump and Biden in previous interviews, in which he called Trump a “gangster” and “neo-fascist” and Biden a “milquetoast neo-liberal.”

Cornel West, known for evoking messages of “love” when talking about politics, positioned his presidential campaign as one rooted in caring for others.

“I care about the quality of your life,” said the former Harvard and Yale professor who identifies as a Democratic socialist. “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 destruction of the planet, the destruction of American democracy.”

While West’s campaign announcement may come as a surprise to some, he has long been critical of political leaders, particularly those residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

Despite previously supporting then-Senator Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, the activist withdrew his support of Obama and infamously criticized the 44th president of the United States during a 2011 interview. West chastised President Obama on his economic policies, calling him “a Black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a Black muppet of corporate plutocrats.”

West took his criticism further in a 2012 interview with Democracy Now when he referred to Obama as a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface.” 

During the 2016 and 2020 elections, West supported liberal Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. After Sanders lost the Democratic Party nomination to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016, West endorsed third-party candidate Jill Stein of the Green Party. He slammed Clinton as a “neoliberal disaster,” citing her positions on foreign policy and banking regulation as reasons for not supporting her historic presidential campaign.

West has been equally critical of Donald Trump during his presidency. After Trump left office and made clear he intended to run for a second term in 2024, West said the former president is “leading a campaign continuing what Malcolm X called a war against Black and colored people.”

Quentin James, founder and president of The Collective PAC, a political action committee geared toward building Black political power, said he admittedly “didn’t see it coming” when theGrio asked him about West’s surprise campaign announcement. 

He recalled working with West when he was a surrogate for the 2008 Obama campaign and described him as a “great academic and thought leader.”

James said, traditionally, third-party candidates could be a good thing for a presidential election because it brings important policy issues to the forefront that the two major parties would otherwise ignore. 

Cliff Albright, executive director of Black Voters Matter Fund, similarly told theGrio that West could “help influence the conversation” and make sure the issues important to Black communities “stay on the table, like some of those issues that young folks want to hear addressed.”

“If he’s able to do that, then more power to him,” he added.

Albright said a pathway to 270 Electoral College votes would be an obvious challenge for West. However, he noted, “Some of the most memorable candidacies weren’t winning candidacies, but they were groundbreaking.”

He referenced civil rights activist Jesse Jackson Sr.’s two presidential campaigns in the ’80s as well as the historic 1972 campaign of Shirley Chisholm. “[They] helped shape the nature of the discussions that were taking place,” Albright said.

However, James cautioned about that calculation this election cycle as Republican leaders are “trying to rip democracy away from us and challenge the right to vote.”

He said, “Do you want to campaign and make Joe Biden enact certain policies? Totally down for that. I think it’s a great use of his platform and his time,” James told theGrio. “But to put your name on a ballot, where really this is only about two choices, and giving folks that other option is giving them a choice to opt-out.”

James said a Cornel West campaign for president could attract young Black voters, who are gradually leaning toward the Republican Party, according to polling data from the 2022 midterm elections. However, he warned that doing so could backfire and lead to a repeat of the 2016 presidential election when Trump pulled out an upset victory that was largely blamed on Democratic voters who supported Stein over Clinton. 

“A potential Donald Trump presidency and a second term of a Biden presidency are very different,” he noted. 

“Joe Biden won the presidency by a little less than 60,000 votes across three states — this is not a laughing matter,” he added. “We saw what happened in 2016. It’ll be even worse in 2024.”

James advised that the Biden-Harris reelection campaign spend their time registering new Black voters and engaging those who have grown lukewarm to the administration and didn’t show up to the polls in 2022.

“I would do everything I can to shore up that vote as early as possible,” he said. “We cannot wait until the third-party campaign of Cornel West picks up steam, or Tim Scott’s campaign for [president] picks up steam or some other right candidate who can tear off Black voters away from the Democratic Party.”

Gerren Keith Gaynor is a White House Correspondent and the Managing Editor of Politics at theGrio. He is based in Washington, D.C.

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