Cornel West, a progressive political activist and philosopher, announced on Monday that he is running his third nominee outside the Democratic-Republican presidential race in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

West tweeted that he was running for the White House on the small left-wing People’s Party, “fighting for the eradication of poverty, mass incarceration, an end to wars and ecological collapse, secure housing, health care, education and a living wage for all.” “

Mr. West, 70, a prominent philosopher whose work has focused on issues of race and class in American society, enters the race with little hope of making it to the White House, but with the ability to win the votes of Democratic President Joe Biden on elections. Next year.

“I want to give America back its best self — the dignity, courage and creativity of the precious ordinary people,” he said on the People’s Party website.

The history of American presidential politics is replete with failed third-party efforts. However, some of them had a significant impact on the presidential elections.

Ross Perot

The nonpartisan candidacy of multimillionaire Ross Perot in the 1992 election is widely seen as a major factor in former Republican President George W. Bush’s victory over Democrat Bill Clinton, as Perot captured a slice of the Republican electorate with nearly 20 million votes. he received. His campaign against the parties (“A party is a party” in English) had a very clever slogan “The party is over”.

In 2000, many analysts believe that Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore would have defeated Republican George W. Bush if Green Party candidate Ralph Nader had not run. Nader appeared in key states, including Florida, where every presidential election was decided by a few hundred votes, giving Bush the presidency.

Mr. West is a professor at United Theological Seminary in New York. He previously taught at Harvard and Princeton Universities.

He emphasizes that he is the voice of radical political thought, and in the previous two presidential elections he supported the left-wing Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, who failed to emerge as a Democratic candidate, losing in 2016 to Hillary Clinton, and in 2020 to the incumbent President of the U.S.A.

Source: Reuters, CNN.