"Cornel West" By Gage Skidmore [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Flickr
CV NEWS FEED // Green Party Presidential Candidate Cornel West this week blasted the Democratic Party for being unwilling to address the concerns of working-class Americans.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, had argued Sunday that the Democratic Party and progressive voters need to unite in support of President Joe Biden “to defeat Trump or whoever the Republican nominee will be” in 2024.
West responded that Sanders’ argument “means that there’s never any possibility for breaking from the corporate duopoly, that there’s never any possibility of trying to speak to the needs of poor working people.”
West said he believed Sanders knows “deep down in his heart “ that “the Democratic Party has no fundamental intention of speaking to the needs of poor people and working people,” adding:
They are dominated by the corporate wing, they’re dominated by the militarists when it comes to foreign policy, and that he and AOC and the others are going to be, in a certain sense, window dressing at worst and, at best, people to appeal to every four years.
West concluded with strong words against the Party. “But,” he said, “the Democratic Party is beyond redemption at this point when it comes to seriously speaking to the needs of poor and working people.”
West is a former supporter of the Democratic Party. In 2008, he supported the candidacy of Barack Obama.
West is one of a growing number of prominent figures leaving the Democratic Party behind and publicly speaking against it.
2020 Presidential Candidate and former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard in 2022 left her Party after serving as Vice Chair of the Democratic National Convention. Gabbard is now an Independent.
Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona left the Democratic Party a few months later, becoming an Independent as well.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, has also spoken favorably – though not decisively – about dropping the Democratic label.
“The brand has become so bad,” he said in August:
The “D” brand and “R” brand. In West Virginia, the “D” brand because it’s nationally bad. It’s not the Democrats in West Virginia. It’s the Democrats in Washington or the Washington policies of the Democrats. You’ve heard me say a million times that I’m not a Washington Democrat.
